ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Overview
Cybersecurity is indispensable to our digital way of life, with millions of cyberattacks occurring every year resulting in trillions of dollars in damages. We are in the midst of a generational shift in cybersecurity, ushered in by the ongoing digital transformation of the enterprise. Attacks can inflict damages that span operational disruption, leadership change, loss of customer trust, and intellectual property theft, among others. The rise and persistence of cyberattacks clearly shows that there is a long way to go from here. Enterprises must deploy solutions that enable them to stay one step ahead of attackers and address intrusion attempts in real-time at machine speed - empowering human operators with the speed, scale, and precision of technology.
We envisioned a revolutionary data and artificial intelligence (AI) paradigm where technology alone could autonomously prevent, detect, and respond to cyberattacks. It is time to fight machine with machine. We pioneered the world’s first purpose-built AI-powered XDR platform to make cybersecurity defense truly autonomous, from the endpoint and beyond. Our Singularity Platform instantly defends against cyberattacks - performing at a faster speed, greater scale, and higher accuracy than otherwise possible from any single human or even a crowd.
Our XDR platform ingests, correlates, and queries petabytes of structured and unstructured data from a myriad of ever-expanding disparate external and internal sources in real-time. We build rich context and deliver greater visibility by constructing a dynamic representation of data across an organization. As a result, our AI models are highly accurate, actionable, and autonomous. Our distributed AI models run both locally on every endpoint and every cloud workload, as well as on our cloud platform. Our Static and vector-agnostic Behavioral AI models, which run on the endpoints themselves, provide our customers with protection even when their devices are not connected to the cloud. In the cloud, our Streaming AI detects anomalies that surface when multiple data feeds are correlated.
Furthermore, our platform provides visibility across an organization’s digital assets through one console, making it easy and very fast for analysts to search through petabytes of data to investigate incidents and hunt threats. Our Singularity Platform offers multi-tenancy and can be deployed on a diverse range of environments that our customers choose, including public, private, or hybrid clouds.
On each endpoint and cloud workload, we run highly optimized AI models in a single lightweight software agent. Our Static AI model predicts file-based attacks of all types, even previously unknown threats, often referred to as “zero-day attacks,” with extreme precision in milliseconds. Our Behavioral AI model maps, monitors, and links all behaviors on the endpoint to create rich, contextual narratives that we call Storylines. These high-fidelity Storylines are continuously evaluated by our Behavioral AI model. When activity is deemed a threat, our software autonomously takes action to kill the attack. Because Storylines contain a complete record of unauthorized changes made during an attack, we are ready to remediate or roll back these changes.
The power to turn back time on a device is unique in the market. It is the ultimate safety net and exemplifies autonomous cybersecurity. Thus, our software eliminates manual, expensive, and time-consuming incident cleanup. In the cloud, our platform aggregates Storylines. Our Streaming AI detects anomalies that surface when multiple data feeds are correlated with additional external and internal data. By providing full visibility into the Storyline of every secured device across the organization through one console, our platform makes it very fast for analysts to easily search through petabytes of data to investigate incidents and proactively hunt threats.
We have extended our control and visibility planes beyond the traditional endpoint to cloud workloads, unmanaged devices, and IoT devices. This empowers security analysts of all skill levels to hunt, investigate, and remediate even the most sophisticated threats across the network leveraging automated context provided by our Storylines. Our proprietary data stack - DataSet - and cloud architecture enable us to retain this rich, contextual data on behalf of our customers for up to three years in a highly cost-efficient manner. All of this threat intelligence is fed back into our AI model and further strengthens our algorithms, creating a strong flywheel effect and deepening our competitive moat.
Our Singularity Platform can be flexibly deployed on the environments that our customers choose, including public, private, or hybrid clouds. Our feature parity across Windows, macOS, Linux, and Kubernetes offers best-of-
breed protection, visibility, and control across today’s heterogeneous information technology (IT) environments. Together, these capabilities make our platform the logical choice for organizations of all sizes, industry verticals, and compliance requirements. Our platform offers true multi-tenancy, which enables the world’s largest organizations and our managed security providers and incident response partners with an excellent management experience. Our customers realize improved cybersecurity outcomes with fewer people.
Our Singularity Platform is used globally by organizations of all sizes across a broad range of industries. Our AI and automation driven approach to cybersecurity has been adopted by some of the world’s largest organizations. As a result, we have grown rapidly since our inception. As of January 31, 2022, we had over 6,700 customers, increasing from over 3,900 as of January 31, 2021. Our revenue for fiscal 2022 and 2021 was $204.8 million and $93.1 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 120%. During this period we continued to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity. As a result, our net loss for fiscal 2022 was $271.1 million compared with net loss of $117.6 million in fiscal 2021.
Industry Background
Cybersecurity is fundamentally a data problem. Advances in AI, specifically machine learning, where algorithms use data to make decisions with minimal human intervention, are already revolutionizing fields such as healthcare, advertising, and securities trading. We believe that AI is ripe for revolutionizing cybersecurity. First, organizations need to ingest, normalize, and correlate petabytes of structured and unstructured data from a myriad of external and internal data in a cost efficient manner. Second, organizations need to apply powerful AI models on this high-fidelity contextual data to automatically detect known and unknown threats, then autonomously remediate and neutralize the threats. It is critical that we harness the power of data and AI to protect our digital way of life.
Stakes are high for organizations and cybercriminals. The exponential growth of sensitive customer and business data has simultaneously made many organizations and governments the target of highly sophisticated cybercriminals. Powered by very large networks of individual attackers distributed worldwide, cybercrime is practically infinite in scale and transcends geographical boundaries. To gain access to an organization’s data, cybercriminals target endpoints and applications and deploy a variety of sophisticated methods in the form of attack frameworks, machine learning, weaponized exploits, fileless techniques, and social engineering. As a result, solutions that help strengthen and scale their cyber defenses cost effectively is a top-level priority for organizations today.
Tectonic shifts in IT require a “Zero Trust” operating procedure. With millions of remote devices accessing thousands of applications running in public, private and hybrid clouds, traditional perimeter-based security controls are bypassed and organizations have to operate in a “Zero Trust” IT environment. The attack surface has expanded considerably, and the notion of a corporate perimeter protected by firewalls is a relic of the past, making the endpoint the epicenter, and endpoint protection software the first, and last, line of defense. Several tectonic shifts in IT have increasingly left companies vulnerable including:
•Rapid adoption of cloud computing. Cloud computing has become a strategic imperative for organizations to accelerate their digital transformation. Security and compliance is a shared responsibility model between the cloud infrastructure provider and their customer, organizations are looking for technology solutions that protect their growing cloud workloads while enabling flexible deployment options across public, private and hybrid clouds.
•The operating system landscape is more complex than ever before. The diversification of IT and bring your own device policies brought Macs and other devices into today’s organizations. Organizations are looking for cybersecurity solutions that deliver comprehensive defense capabilities and feature parity across a large variety of operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, without burdening their IT teams.
•Proliferation of connected devices. Billions of connected devices are online today and the numbers are only expected to increase. Many of these devices will have little to no built-in security capabilities. Cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting inherent vulnerabilities in these devices to breach organizations. Unmanaged devices are especially vulnerable. As a result, the attack surface has exploded. Visibility across connected devices and continuous assessment of their risk profile has become a top priority for organizations.
•Remote work is here to stay. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way most organizations operate, accelerating technology’s role in supporting remote work. The pandemic has accelerated the structural shift towards a more distributed workforce. The growth of remote work has increased the risk of cyberattacks. As a result of the accelerated structural shift towards a distributed workforce, organizations are increasingly looking for cybersecurity solutions that safeguard their remote workforce.
Sophisticated cyberattacks circumvent existing security controls. Cyberattacks have evolved from malware to highly sophisticated, organized and large-scale attacks by malicious insiders, criminal syndicates, and nation-states seeking to circumvent existing security controls and undermine critical societal functions through a variety of attacks that are fast acting that take only seconds to breach organizations, exfiltrate data, demand ransoms, and disrupt operations. Alternatively, some attacks, such as advanced persistent attacks (APT), and targeted attacks, are designed to breach the organization and stealthily infiltrate across assets to steal data, facilitate future attacks, or cause other harm over a long period of time, all while operating undetected.
Cybersecurity teams are unable to scale. While the number of connected devices, applications and cyber threats have increased exponentially, organizations are facing an acute shortage of skilled cybersecurity talent. The large number of security solutions that companies have deployed over time generate large volumes of alerts that overwhelm security teams as they have to sift through and analyze. Out of necessity, organizations are demanding solutions that do not require human intervention to prevent, detect, and remediate cyber threats.
Limitations of Existing Solutions
Organizations must deploy solutions that enable them to stay one step ahead of attackers and address intrusion attempts in real-time. As attackers up the ante, developing new skills and deploying new tactics and techniques, existing tools are often unable to prevent and respond effectively to breaches. The result is a rising number of successful high-profile attacks.
Key limitations of existing tools are that they:
•Cover a limited spectrum of cyber threats. Existing tools, such as signature-based approaches, human-powered monitoring, application whitelisting and sandboxing, are each effective under limited circumstances, but lack the ability to detect the full spectrum of threats organizations are dealing with. For example, signature-based approaches can detect attacks that have been seen previously, but are incapable of preventing a wide range of attacks, such as unknown malware, ransomware, modified versions of previously known attacks and the exploitation of zero day vulnerabilities. In addition, they lack the ability to detect and prevent an increasing number of fileless attacks, that deposit no malware, but instead exploit operating system vulnerabilities and use trusted tools within IT environments. As a result, despite deploying a myriad of point solutions, organizations have continued to suffer huge losses from cyberattacks.
•Utilize AI approaches that rely on humans to power protection mechanisms. First generation AI tools cannot handle the volume, variety, and velocity of data that must be ingested and analyzed, in real-time, to be effective in preventing breaches. These tools often rely on ineffective pattern-matching algorithms in the cloud that generate so much “noise” that human intervention is required to extract useful “signals.” Without curated, contextual data, these tools only generate more alerts that need to be analyzed by humans. They cannot take action at machine speed and are thus unable to detect and prevent or stop many fast-acting attacks. Additionally, due to communication latency with the cloud, these tools cannot generate actionable insights in real-time, which is required to stop many current threats.
•Lack long-term data visibility to proactively investigate advanced threats. Existing endpoint detection and response tools lack the capability to store large sets of historical data cost efficiently, and consequently often only offer limited data retention capabilities. This results in only partial datasets being available for threat hunting and time bound retrospective forensic analysis. Limited historical EDR data makes full incident investigation challenging for security personnel, as they are unable to go back in time and see how the attack breached the organization and progressed.
•Struggle to protect complex modern IT environments. Existing tools were not designed to protect today’s multi-cloud, multi-device, multi-OS IT environments. Vendors have extended their existing solutions by bolting on functionalities, which has led to a wide disparity of capabilities across endpoints and operating systems. Existing tools further lack the ability to identify unmanaged IoT devices which often have very limited, if any, built-in security capabilities and can be used by attackers to access the networks of target organizations. This lack of unified visibility and control over endpoints, cloud workloads, and IoT devices results in gaps in security coverage for organizations.
•Lack deployment flexibility for organizations. Organizations struggle with the limited deployment methods mandated by existing tools. On-premise tools impose complexity and maintenance burdens on organizations. These tools typically lack the ability to quickly adapt to organizations’ rapidly evolving IT environments, which requires significant upfront investments and configuration and integration efforts. On the other hand, cloud-only cybersecurity vendors are unsuitable for many large and complex enterprises and governments that need private or hybrid cloud solutions to meet their security, regulatory, and compliance requirements.
•Inhibit technology workflow automation. Many existing tools lack out-of-the box APIs and rely heavily on professional services, which makes the integration and implementation process long, expensive and often unattainable. The lack of flexible workflow integrations limits organizations’ ability to reduce overhead by automating processes, and to improve their security by ensuring that process steps are done quickly, consistently, and according to their predefined requirements.
A new paradigm for cybersecurity is needed to autonomously protect organizations and their heterogeneous IT footprints from highly sophisticated, machine-based attacks in a holistic, seamless, and automated manner.
Our Revolutionary Autonomous Approach to Cybersecurity
Our AI-powered Singularity Platform defines and delivers XDR. Our platform ingests, correlates, and queries petabytes of structured and unstructured data from a myriad of disparate external and internal sources in real-time. We build rich context by constructing a dynamic representation of data across an organization. As a result, our AI models are highly accurate, actionable, and autonomous. Our distributed AI models run both locally on every endpoint and every cloud workload, as well as on our cloud platform. Our Static and vector-agnostic Behavioral AI models, which run on the endpoints themselves, provide our customers with protection even when their devices are not connected to the cloud. In the cloud, our Streaming AI detects anomalies that surface when multiple data feeds are correlated. Furthermore, our platform provides visibility across an organization’s digital assets through one console, making it easy and very fast for analysts to search through petabytes of data to investigate incidents and hunt threats. Our Singularity Platform offers multi-tenancy and can be deployed on a diverse range of environments that our customers choose, including public, private, or hybrid clouds.
Singularity XDR Platform Capabilities and Our Competitive Strengths
•Protects against present and future cyber threats. A combination of our powerful Static AI and Behavioral AI on the device with Streaming AI models in the cloud addresses the spectrum of attacks in an evolving threat landscape, including ransomware, known and unknown malware, trojans, hacking tools, memory exploits, script misuse, bad macros and “living off the land,” or file-less, attacks. As our on-device machine
learning models assess how an endpoint behaves, they are completely independent of the attack vector itself or any further updates and configurations.
•Enables protection and visibility across all digital assets. Our Singularity Platform provides organizations with our full suite of real-time threat prevention, detection, and remediation capabilities across all of their endpoints, cloud workloads, servers, and operating systems. Our platform further leverages our agents, combined with passive and active network discovery methods, to provide our customers with organization-wide visibility into all of their network assets, managed and unmanaged. This allows customers to identify potentially vulnerable endpoints and either add protection, or isolate them from the network.
•Provides autonomous protection and remediation. Powered by our AI and Storyline technology, our agents defend and heal endpoints autonomously and in real-time by stopping malicious processes, quarantining, remediating, and even rolling back events to surgically keep endpoints clean. Rollbacks are performed autonomously and in real-time, eliminating the need for manual, expensive, and time-consuming incident cleanup.
•Enables facilitated, as well as fully-automated, incident investigation and proactive threat hunting. Our platform gives security teams the ability to search their IT assets for behavioral indicators via a single-click interface. Our deep visibility and contextual data empowers security analysts of all skill levels to run queries at very fast speeds, and quickly understand the root causes behind the most complex threats. Our watchlists further lighten the load on security teams by giving them the ability to schedule customized and fully automated threat hunting searches according to their own criteria.
•Provides full forensic recall for complete remediation. We offer our customers the ability to retain rich, contextual data for up to three years in a highly cost efficient manner. This forensic data helps our customers to investigate breaches that have stealthily infiltrated their organization and operated undetected for many months. It gives them the ability to ensure that any incident has been fully remediated without the need to reimage or replace elements of their IT infrastructure.
•Provides a superior customer experience. We put the user at the center of our product development and engineering processes. The combination of our intuitive and clean user interface, our ability to provide context with one click, and our high degree of automation empowers our customers to use our platform independent of their expertise level.
•Proprietary data stack. Our modern, innovative, and extensible data stack - DataSet - enables us to ingest, process and analyze massive amounts and a wide variety of data types efficiently. Our independent, component-driven architecture allows us to evolve rapidly leveraging continued innovations of public cloud infrastructure, while controlling every aspect of our innovation roadmap and customer experience. As more data improves our AI algorithms and cross-organizational visibility, our data stack allows us to offer superior threat protection for our customers.
•Deeply embedded within our customers’ IT stacks. Our API-first approach and Singularity Marketplace allow our customers to easily integrate intelligence, analytics, automation, and other third-party business applications with our platform.
•Flexible deployment model that delivers rapid time to value. Our Singularity Platform can be quickly and easily deployed on a diverse range of environments of our customers, and without extensive configuration or maintenance - including the public, private or hybrid cloud, making it relevant for organizations of all sizes with varying compliance and regulatory requirements.
•Rich partner ecosystem. We have deep partnerships with many of the leading Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), alliance partners whom we engage with on joint technology and/or go-to-market strategies; and channel partners, such as distributors, resellers, Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), Managed Detection and Response Providers (MDRs), Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), and Incident Response (IR) firms. Our partner relationships provide us with significantly broader market reach. In particular, we do not currently have a services offering that competes with our IR partners. Therefore, they seek to bring us into remediation situations where their customers often become our customers. As a result, many of our partners act as force multipliers and broaden our market reach. By empowering MSPs, MSSPs, MDRs, and IR firms with our technology and through our deep partnerships with them, we benefit from the market penetration of those entities.
•Quality and access of cybersecurity and AI talent. Our thought leadership in security and AI, combined with our award winning culture, allows us to attract and retain some of the best talent at a global scale. It allows us to develop state-of-the-art solutions, to innovate faster, and to solve many of the industry’s most complex problems.
We believe our XDR capabilities position us well to consolidate and unify spend across these categories. Over time, we believe this unification and re-architecture of the prevention, detection and response paradigm will create new opportunities for additional products and features for us.
Growth Strategy
Key elements of our growth strategy include:
•Continue to innovate and enhance our cybersecurity and data platform. We will continue to expand our platform and XDR capabilities by developing new modules to include greater functionality and address additional use cases. As a pioneer in autonomous and AI-based endpoint security, we have established a track record for expanding our platform capabilities with new modules. Through convergence of cybersecurity and data, we intend to bring our customers and prospects a variety of differentiated cybersecurity-first and enhanced data analytics offerings. Having access to some of the world’s top cybersecurity and AI talent through our distributed workforce model and our research and development centers across North America, Israel, Europe, and Asia allows us to continue hiring top technical talent and innovate to maintain our leading position.
•Drive new customer acquisition. As of January 31, 2022, we had over 6,700 customers, ranging from large enterprises, such as Fortune 10 companies, to small and medium-sized businesses. We intend to continue to add new customers through a product-first approach. This approach enables us to build trusted relationships with a large and rapidly growing group of highly influential managed service and incident response providers, as opposed to creating a dynamic of competition that creates friction between product vendors and service providers. We derive significant customer acquisition benefits from our cloud-delivered platform, which makes it easy to onboard new customers. We are currently certified under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), and we intend to further grow our footprint within the U.S. federal government. We intend to continue to build our relationships with our channel partners, including MSPs, MSSPs, MDRs, OEMs, and IR firms, as well as our alliance partners to expand our market reach.
•Increase adoption within our customer base. We have been successful in our ability to grow revenue from our customer base as they deploy additional endpoints and expand the use of our platform. As we enhance our platform functionality and value proposition, we expect many of our customers to adopt additional platform functionalities and Singularity modules to address all of their cybersecurity use cases through the same platform and agent. Our customers can seamlessly activate additional modules and add increased functionality through the already deployed agent. Module driven growth has been broad-based with notable strength from our cloud and data modules. This enables us to show in-product promotions and trials and to
drive the expansion of our Singularity Modules. The power of our land-and-expand strategy is evidenced by our 129% dollar-based net retention rates as of January 31, 2022.
•Expand our global footprint. Revenue generated outside of the United States was 32% for fiscal 2022, compared to 30% for fiscal 2021. We intend to continue to grow our international customer base by increasing our investments in international operations. We are investing and hiring talent to expand our business in Asia-Pacific and Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. For example, we recently opened our new R&D center in the Czech Republic.
•Expand our total addressable market through acquisitions. We evaluate acquisition prospects that align with our platform, customer, and strategic market opportunities. We intend to use these opportunities to extend the reach of our XDR platform into adjacencies that complement our core offerings. In addition, strategic minority investments in emerging technologies allow us to further enhance our platform capabilities in areas that may be of future interest to us. We are committed to innovation, automation, and securing data wherever it resides with a front-row seat into cutting-edge cybersecurity technologies. As an example, on March 15, 2022, we signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire 100% of the issued and outstanding equity securities (the Acquisition) of Attivo Networks, Inc. (Attivo), a leading identity security and lateral movement protection company (for a more detailed discussion, see Note 8, Subsequent Events, to the consolidated financial statements included in Part II, Item 8, Financial Statements and Supplementary Data).
Our Singularity XDR Platform
Our Singularity XDR Platform delivers AI-powered autonomous threat prevention, detection, and response capabilities across an organization’s endpoints and cloud workloads, enabling seamless and automatic protection against a full spectrum of cyber threats. We built our platform to be deployed as a cloud service or in private and hybrid clouds.
Our platform capabilities are connected through three key patented technologies:
•Data Analytics. Our data analytics technology can ingest, correlate, and query petabytes of structured and unstructured data from disparate external and internal sources at machine speed.
•AI. Our Static, Behavioral, and Streaming AI technologies that run in a distributed manner on our data cloud as well as on every endpoint and every cloud workload we protect.
•Storyline. Our Storyline technology builds a model of real-time running processes and their behaviors, to create rich, contextual data narratives which become the input to our Behavioral AI model. Storyline powers our unified Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), or, Extended Detection and Response (XDR) functionalities. Storyline is the foundation of our EPP while providing unprecedented levels of visibility with contextual information for benign and malicious processes. We extend our fundamental protection, visibility and response capabilities well beyond the endpoint to cloud, and third-party solutions in our Singularity Platform. We designed our platform based on our “design to delight” principle and developed a powerful yet simple and intuitive user experience.
Proprietary XDR Data Lake
Dataset is our XDR data stack that seamlessly fuses together the data, access, control, and integration planes of EPP, EDR, Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP), and IoT security into a centralized platform. With Singularity, organizations gain access to back-end data across the organization through a single solution. It was designed with the goal of optimizing scale, cost and performance - what we call the Golden Ratio of Big Data. This is achieved by the use of innovative data structures, storage systems, and algorithms:
•Ingest. Our platform is able to ingest structured and unstructured data from any source, with little to no manual configuration and at unprecedented speed and scale.
•Normalize. Aligns every data point to extract the shared elements regardless of origin and to produce true insights.
•Correlate. We correlate events from multiple sources into Storylines which contains event data, both benign and malicious, in a context-rich format for easy understanding.
•Analyze. Our Singularity Platform enriches and visualizes every Storyline with information from Threat Intelligence sources, both homegrown and through integrations with third-party intelligence information services.
Endpoint Protection
Our next-generation antivirus technology provides autonomous real-time protection across all operating systems, including Windows, Linux, macOS, and cloud-native and containerized workloads. Our endpoint protection is powered by distributed AI which resides both on devices as well as in the cloud for always-on, machine-speed protection. It is capable of autonomous decision making on the device and stopping threats in milliseconds rather than minutes, hours or even days. We are able to provide superior performance compared to traditional signature-based antivirus tools and earlier next-gen antivirus products with the following three key capabilities:
•Static AI. Our on-device AI model can detect file-based attacks predictively, even those that are previously unknown zero day exploits, with extreme precision in milliseconds. Our Static AI model is the output of a supervised machine learning cycle that is trained on a continuously evolving data set from billions of files coupled with the data from multiple threat intelligence sources, including our proprietary Embedded Threat Intelligence.
•Behavioral AI. Our on-device AI model continuously scores Storylines from the device to precisely classify individual or group behaviors as benign or malicious. The accuracy of our Behavioral AI is powered by the rich contextual information that is encoded in each Storyline that is being scored. As a result, it is attack vector agnostic because it is not limited to any particular pathway used by attackers to penetrate a system, such as zero day vulnerability exploits and living off the land attacks.
•Embedded Threat Intelligence. Our cloud threat intelligence system combines threat information from our data analytics and research teams, Vigilance MDR and IR services, and other commercial and proprietary threat feeds.
Endpoint Detection and Response
Unlike first-generation EDR products that are reactive and mainly focused on collecting data, our ActiveEDR solutions leverage Storylines to reduce analysis time and to automate response actions by significantly minimizing the time between detection and response through technology automation. It enables on-device behavioral analysis, auto-remediation, and response in a fully autonomous fashion. ActiveEDR reduces analysis time and requirements for specialized skills by providing technology-generated context which would otherwise need to be produced by highly skilled people manually in a time-intensive and error prone fashion. ActiveEDR excels at visualizing context, pinpointing anomalies, and providing a variety of granular responses. The main capabilities of ActiveEDR are:
•Deep Visibility Threat Hunting. Deep Visibility Threat Hunting provides an easy-to-use search interface on top of our Deep Visibility dataset. The Storylines shown within Deep Visibility hunts enable one-click responses, which are far easier and faster to execute than manually scripting responses. As a result, both entry level analysts and highly skilled analysts can analyze results faster, review more alerts, and be more productive with the power of technology.
•Response Capabilities. Our Singularity Platform offers one of the broadest sets of response actions in the EDR market. Leveraging Storylines, we automate responses or make them optionally initiated by operators. Our response capabilities enable security analyst to Kill, Quarantine, Remediate, Remote Shell, and Rollback.
Multi-tenancy Architecture
We offer complete multi-tenancy with four tiers— Global, Account, Site, and Group. Policies set at the higher tier of the hierarchy are automatically inherited by the lower levels, but administrators may override them to create local policies at any tier. We also support fully customizable Role Based Access Control (RBAC), that allows organizations to create specific rules controlling console permissions at a granular level. This enables large, distributed teams to work independently while at the same time providing a global view for the CISO and other stakeholders. It further enables our platform adoption by the world’s largest organizations, MSPs, MSSPs, MDRs, OEMs, and IR firms.
Singularity XDR Integrations
Singularity XDR unifies and extends detection, investigation, and response capability across the entire enterprise, providing security teams with centralized end-to-end enterprise visibility, powerful analytics, and automated responses across the technology stack. This empowers security teams to see data collected by disparate security solutions from all platforms, including endpoints, cloud workloads, network devices, email, identity, and more, within a single dashboard. It enables customers to seamlessly extend the power of the Singularity Platform across the entire IT stack—regardless of vendor—to automate response actions. Our XDR integrations give customers the flexibility to operate our platform as a platform-as-a-service in their own customized graphical user interface and workflows simply by leveraging our robust, well-documented and easy-to-use APIs.
IT and Security Operations
Our Singularity Platform enables security and IT teams to identify vulnerabilities, fix insecure configurations, and manage endpoints. Vulnerable and mis-configured applications make it easier for attackers to gain entry and evade detection. Addressing these vulnerabilities and mis-configured settings strengthens the security risk profile of our customers. Our platform has the following capabilities:
•Application Inventory. Maintains a software application inventory across an entire organization, by capturing the list of installed applications and their attributes such as their version numbers, install date, and publisher. Our software collects this information in real-time, enabling our customers to easily search and sort through these attributes in a global application inventory view within the console. Customers can quickly perform software frequency analysis and compliance checks.
•Scanless Vulnerability Assessment. Using our real-time organization-wide Application Inventory database, our solution is able to provide highly accurate and dynamic Vulnerability Management information without the need to deploy another solution. We do so by matching version information from our Application Inventory database to the known vulnerabilities published as Common Vulnerability Enumeration records.
•Device Control. Allows maximum granularity and flexibility when defining Device Control policies to prevent data exfiltration and malware entry. Our Device Control module supports two main media types: USB and Bluetooth devices. Our Bluetooth Device Control capability augments our IoT capability, limiting pairing with unsanctioned hardware and other wearable devices. We believe the ability to provide granular control for Bluetooth devices in conjunction with other forms of USB media is a competitive differentiator.
•Native OS Host Firewall Control. Leverages native operating system infrastructure to provide an application-aware and location-aware endpoint firewall orchestrator for remote devices. Firewall control provides visibility, malware prevention, and network segmentation by utilizing the native firewall capabilities on Windows, macOS, and Linux devices. With our Singularity Platform, we enable our users to keep their workforce protected, segment their networks, and block traffic from malicious IPs/C2 servers using the same console that they use to monitor threats.
•File Integrity Monitoring. The data collected by our Deep Visibility EDR can be used to replace traditional file integrity monitoring solutions. Coupled with Storyline Active Response (STAR), our File Integrity solution (FIM) is able to automatically alert or remediate unauthorized changes to these files. Organizations use this to be compliant with PCI DSS and other regulatory requirements while eliminating other agents, products, and spend.
Singularity XDR Platform Tiers
Our Singularity XDR Platform offers a highly flexible deployment model. It is primarily hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS) in multiple regions - North America, European Union, Asia Pacific, and AWS GovCloud. We also support deploying our platform in Google Cloud as well as customers’ on-premise data centers, private, and hybrid cloud environments for organizations with specialized hosting and data sovereignty needs.
Our Singularity XDR Platform provides feature parity across Windows, macOS, and Linux. It provides customers with full flexibility through a multi-tier offering priced on a per agent basis, which generally corresponds with an endpoint, server, virtual machine, or host. The tiers of our Singularity Platform include:
•Singularity Core. Our entry level security solution for organizations that want to replace antivirus tools with our EPP which we believe is more effective and easier to manage than legacy antivirus and next-gen antivirus products. Singularity Core includes our Static and Behavioral AI models and autonomous threat response and rollback features.
•Singularity Control. Made for organizations seeking best-of-breed security with the addition of our “security suite” features for endpoint management. It provides additional features for control network connectivity, USB and Bluetooth peripherals, and to uncover rogue devices.
•Singularity Complete. Our flagship offering that includes our full suite of product capabilities.
Singularity XDR Platform Modules
We further offer customers a broad set of capabilities through our Singularity Modules. We price our modules as a subscription on a per agent basis. Our most notable modules include:
Cloud Security
Our CWPP extends distributed, autonomous endpoint protection, detection, and response to compute workloads running in public clouds, private clouds, and on-prem data centers. Our runtime protection delivers prevention, detection, response and hunting functionalities purpose-built for these environments. We offer full-fledged EPP and EDR for servers, virtual machines, and containerized workloads. Our Cloud Application Control locks down the running image of servers and containers to prevent configuration drift and protect against unauthorized changes, in line with best practices for cloud workload security.
Attack Surface Management
Our Ranger module enables control of the enterprise network attack surface in real time by discovering, identifying, and containing any device-based threat. Ranger leverages the presence of our software in an organization’s network to track assets, create an Enterprise Asset Map, perform network segmentation, deploy our agents to unprotected devices, and provide risk scores. Ranger provides organization-wide inventory and control of IoT devices by discovering connected devices, including virtual machines, containers, and IoT devices such as printers, smart TVs, and thermostats. Ranger has four key component features:
•Rogue Discovery. Enables administrators to identify unprotected or “rogue assets” and verifies our agent is installed on all corporate assets.
•Ranger Insight. Provides a clear picture of the inventory and risk in the IoT environment, including open ports, header and application versions, and vulnerability information,
•Rogue Control. Creates network segments to restrict access to a corporate network. Rogue Control prevents unsanctioned devices, such as guest machines, from connecting to authorized networks.
•Ranger Auto-Deploy. Rapidly deploys our agents using service credentials to unprotected endpoints with no additional IT infrastructure or software. Auto-Deploy provides security teams with complete, instant asset coverage.
Mobile Endpoint Security
Our Singularity Mobile module enables customers to manage mobile devices through behavioral AI-driven protection, detection, and response directly for iOS, Android, and ChromeOS devices. It delivers mobile threat defense that is local, adaptive, and real-time, to thwart mobile malware and phishing attacks at the device, with or without a cloud connection. It is the industry’s leading on-device behavioral AI product that dynamically detects never before seen malware, phishing, exploits, and man-in-the-middle attacks. Singularity Mobile provides security and data privacy to support zero trust.
XDR Power Tools
Our Singularity XDR Power Tools modules complement and extend Singularity EDR & XDR capabilities for organizations seeking advanced investigative workflows and a long, retrospective look back to support comprehensive incident response. These modules include:
•Binary Vault. Enables customers to store and download copies of any file that has been executed in their environment for forensic review and reverse engineering. Binary Vault can store a copy of every known binary, both benign and malicious, that executes across an enterprise. This enables advanced security analysts to download a copy of any file that has been executed in their environment for forensic review and reverse engineering, and provides them with access to a broader dataset and more complete lookback capabilities than any of our competitors.
•Remote Script Orchestration (RSO). Enables enterprises and incident responders to investigate and respond to threats on multiple endpoints across the organization remotely, enabling them to easily manage their entire fleet. In incident response situations, rapid artifact extraction and endpoint state querying across the entire enterprise is critical. Our remote script orchestration module allows concurrent execution of custom and preset scripts across an enterprise, instead of having to triage with a device by device approach. By converging our protection, detection, and response capabilities with remote script orchestration, our platform is the only solution that is needed to respond to a breach.
•Storyline Active Response (STAR). STAR gives users the capability to set custom Indicators of Compromise (IOC) based rules for real-time analysis, alerting, and automatic response workflows. Our STAR module is also capable of ingesting threat intelligence feeds to enhance and correlate analyses. The STAR module uses Streaming AI technology to match billions of events to tens of millions of IOCs at the time of ingestion. STAR is a threat hunting and workflow orchestration force multiplier. Without STAR, it is difficult for security analysts to keep pace with the number and complexity of emerging threats from an EDR perspective.
•Data Retention. Offers data retention from one month to three years and beyond. Modern attacks can take days and weeks to initiate after infiltration. Therefore, it is critical for an EDR solution to provide visibility for extended periods of time. This enhances both retrospective analysis and proactive hunting measures. Our platform has been designed and built to support extended data retention to time periods that far exceed what others are able to offer, and we do so on a cost-efficient basis due to our data retention architecture. We offer data retention for up to three years to provide maximum value from our Deep Visibility Threat Hunting module.
•Cloud Funnel. Allows organizations to export their XDR data in real-time to their private data lakes, whether locally-hosted or in the cloud. It securely streams a copy of all endpoint EDR telemetry to a
customer’s local data lake for further correlation with other security tools, while allowing offline data storage for audit and compliance.
WatchTower
WatchTower delivers threat hunting and insights to help customers understand the nature of threats, targeted attacks, threat actors, and risk reduction. It provides intelligence-driven, cross-platform threat hunting to help customers adapt to the modern threat landscape through visibility and actionability to novel attacker techniques, global APT, campaigns, and emerging cybercrimes. As we track threat actors globally, WatchTower parses, consolidates, and contextualizes threat intelligence sources and hunts for threats in our customers’ environments. WatchTower distills intelligence down to its most valuable insights, such as a summary bulletin of the threat, its impact on our customers’ organizations, and how the threat can be addressed.
Vigilance MDR
Vigilance MDR leverages the expertise of our in-house security analysts to review, act upon, and document every threat that our Singularity Platform autonomously identifies. It adds a human lens to cybersecurity understanding and augments our customers’ in-house security teams. Due to the autonomous nature of our Singularity Platform, Vigilance MDR provides rapid response times to threats. Our technology-powered digital forensics analysis and incident response offering takes Vigilance MDR two steps further and provides customers with a full-service solution and enables customers to benefit from world-class SOC operations with customized threat annotation and response. Vigilance MDR helps customers of all sizes augment their cybersecurity staff with a 24/7/365 globally-distributed operation which operates under the industry’s only publicly available SLAs.
DataSet Platform
Building upon the acquisition of Scalyr, Inc., we launched DataSet, a revolutionary live enterprise data platform for data queries, analytics, insights, and retention. DataSet expands our capabilities beyond cybersecurity use cases, such as data analytics. DataSet takes a security-first perspective to data analytics. It is a cloud-native flexible enterprise data platform built for all types of data live or historical, at petabyte scale. By eliminating data schema requirements from the ingestion process and index limitations from querying, DataSet can process massive amounts of live data in real time, delivering log management, data analytics, and alerting with unparalleled speed, performance, and efficiency built on a security and privacy-first foundation.
As a software as a service (SaaS) platform, it can be deployed in minutes and is easy to operate without any maintenance requirement. DataSet is built for the cloud and offered as a cloud service freeing up engineering resources from managing data refineries. DataSet is built with the security and controls that enterprises require for their most precious asset: data.
Our Customers
As of January 31, 2022, we had over 6,700 customers using our Singularity XDR Platform in approximately 100 countries. We are protecting the digital infrastructures of thousands of customers around the world, including large global enterprises, small and medium sized businesses, and government organizations. Our business does not depend on any single end customer. For a definition of customer, see the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Key Business Metrics—Customers with ARR of $100,000 or More.”
Seasonality
We experience seasonal fluctuations in our financial results due to the annual budget approval process of many of our customers. We typically receive a higher percentage of our annual orders from new customers, as well as renewal orders from existing customers, in our fourth fiscal quarter as compared to other quarters due to the annual budget approval process of many of our customers.
Human Capital Resources
Our Team
As of January 31, 2022, we had over 1,200 full-time employees worldwide. We also engage temporary employees and consultants as needed to support our operations.
Our U.S.-based employees includes team members in all key functions, including go-to-market, customer success, technology, product, and support. Each of our U.S. offices has a different functional focus but share a driven, customer-centric culture. Our headquarters in Mountain View, California is where the majority of our executive team, marketing, finance, legal, people and talent, and sales operations is located, which supports cross functional collaboration. Our office in Eugene, Oregon hosts our North American customer success and support team, as well as our sales development and inside sales teams. Having these teams together supports a highly collaborative and customer-focused site.
Our office in Tel Aviv, Israel benefits from Israel’s concentration of cybersecurity experts. Our employees in Israel draw from Israel’s deep pool of Israeli military cybersecurity and intelligence experts, product mavens, and general technical talent. Our office in Prague, Czech Republic houses research and product development functions to augment current teams across the globe and the expansion of our global engineering organization.
Our European head office is in Amsterdam, Netherlands, which we chose for its talent pool, language versatility, diversity, labor and tax laws, and central location in relation to our offices in the United States and Israel.
None of our employees are represented by a labor union or are a party to a collective bargaining arrangement. We have not experienced any work stoppages and we believe that our employee relations are strong.
Our Culture
Our core values capture our company’s culture and guide our approach on how we build and grow our business with all stakeholders:
•Trust. Be dependable. Conduct yourself with the highest integrity at all times.
•Accountability. Be reliable in all your actions and words. Put customers first. Be the owner.
•OneSentinel. Be passionate about driving team success and collaboration across our company.
•Relentlessness. Act with unwavering purpose and determination in everything you do.
•Ingenuity. Encourage innovative approaches to problem-solving and market leadership. Embrace diverse perspectives. Hustle.
•Community. Be kind to one another. Think about how your actions will affect others. Together.
We value transparent and respectful communication as key components of our continuous feedback culture, something that we view as a key driver of our business success. We benefit from the varied perspectives that come from our global workforce. We believe in the strengths of diversity and are committed to building out a diverse talent base. We plan to continue investing in hiring employees both in and outside of the United States.
We received Great Place to Work, a global authority on workplace culture, certification in fiscal 2022 in the United States, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In fiscal 2022, we also received the Best CEO, Culture, Diversity and Women awards from Comparably, a leader in compensation, culture, and career monitoring. Our presence and engagement across all social media platforms continues to grow rapidly, a reflection of the market’s perception of us and our leadership as innovators in the cybersecurity space.
Retention and Talent Development
We believe that motivating and retaining talent at all levels is vital to our success. Our compensation and benefits program is intended to anticipate and meet the needs of our employees. In addition to base salary, these programs, which vary by country and region, include annual bonuses, equity awards, an employee stock purchase plan, a 401(k) plan, including a recently announced 401(k) match in the United States, healthcare and insurance benefits, health savings and flexible spending accounts, unlimited vacation, wellness reimbursement, and more. We have increased our investment in training and development and have rolled out several key programs as well as enabling our employees to access over 1,000 on demand webinars in technical and soft skills areas.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have worked to globally realign our benefits to focus on business continuity and employee well-being. We have been very intentional with our efforts to support employees while working from home, and have enhanced and promoted programs to support employees’ physical and mental health and well-being. We have built a company that we believe can thrive whether our employees are in offices or remote.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
At SentinelOne, we cultivate and foster an inclusive workplace for all Sentinels through key initiatives and programs including:
•Strategic partnership with the organization Women in Cybersecurity (WiCys), including an apprenticeship program;
•University recruiting for internships targeting underrepresented minorities;
•Monthly internal celebrations including Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Pride, and Hispanic Heritage Month; and
•Inclusive recruitment and hiring practices to source diverse talent.
Research and Development
Our research and development organization is responsible for the design, development, testing, and delivery of new technologies, features and integrations of our platform, as well as the continued improvement and iteration of our existing products. It is also responsible for operating and scaling our platform including its underlying infrastructure. Our most significant investments are in research and development to drive core technology innovation and bring new products to market. Research and development employees are located primarily in our Israel and the Czech Republic offices, and remotely.
We have a proven team that constantly works to expand our market, customer and user reach and impact with new, innovative products. As of January 31, 2022, we had approximately 380 employees in our research and development organization. We intend to continue to invest in our research and development capabilities to extend our platform and products.
Our Go-To-Market Strategy
Our sales and marketing organizations partner to create brand awareness, drive demand, and develop customer relationships to deliver strong sales pipeline coverage and revenue growth.
Sales
We sell subscriptions to our Singularity Platform through our direct sales team, which is composed of field sales and inside sales professionals. Our sales team leverages our global network of channel and alliance partners for prospect access and fulfillment. For specific market segments, our channel partners independently manage the complete sales cycle resulting in a highly scaled and leveraged sales experience. Our sales team also identifies existing customers who may be interested in free trials of additional platform modules, which serves as a powerful
driver of our “land and expand” growth model. Through segmenting our sales teams by customer size, we can deploy an efficient and scalable sales model which enables rapid prospect engagement, thorough technology evaluations, and yields lasting customer relationships.
Marketing
Our marketing organization is focused on building our brand reputation, increasing the awareness of our platform, and driving prospect and customer demand. To support these efforts, we deliver broad based brand campaigns to build awareness of our solutions and our company. We also deliver targeted and situational content to demonstrate thought leadership in the security industry, including speaking engagements with the security industry's foremost organizations to provide expert advice, educating the public about the cyber threats, and identifying threat research discoveries that illustrate the business outcomes and differentiation of our solution. We engage in paid media, web marketing, out of home media advertising, industry and trade conferences, analyst engagements, producing whitepapers, demand generation via digital and web, telemarketing, and targeted displacement campaigns. We employ a wide range of digital programs, including search engine marketing, online and social media initiatives, and content syndication to increase traffic to our website and encourage new customers to free trials of our Singularity Platform. Additionally, we engage in joint marketing activities with our channel and alliance partners. Over the past several years, we have experienced significant increases in our brand relevance as demonstrated by coverage in leading global press, analyst publications, website traffic, web demo requests, and channel partner engagement.
Partnership Ecosystem
We work with a number of partners to create “better together” technology solutions for mutual customers, many of which we then leverage in joint go-to-market strategies. These partnerships include many of the leading ISVs, alliance partners, MSPs, MSSPs, MDRs, OEMs, and IR firms. We provide our partners with our differentiated technology and platform to enable them to provide the best security service to their own customers.
Our Singularity XDR Platform offers our partners complete multi-tenancy and a superior level of management capability and flexibility with tiering, policy inheritance, and customizable role-based access control from the same console. Our data model and open architecture enable our partners to rapidly build and innovate across a wide range of use cases and deliver their products on top of our technology. As such, our partners are not our competitors but instead, act as force multipliers for our go-to-market investments.
Our partner integrations deliver more secure solutions and an improved end user experience to their customers. Our ISV and alliance partnerships focus on security analytics, network and infrastructure security, threat platforms and orchestration, automation, and other mainstream technology integrations.
Singularity Marketplace
Singularity Marketplace is an open application ecosystem that enables customers to seamlessly integrate dozens of applications. Organizations can gain visibility over data across historically disparate security solutions without the need for custom business logic, coding or complex configuration. Organizations can integrate any security applications and tools regard-less of vendor into a single platform without coding or scripting required. Singularity Marketplace extends the power of our platform across the entire security and IT stack to build an effective threat defense posture with layered security, collaborative processes, and integrated products.
Singularity Marketplace enables security teams to converge on a single pane-of-glass for extended detection and response workflows to minimize context switching and distractions during triage and incident response. It helps them gain insights from shared security events without requiring a massive time investment in custom business logic, code, and complex configuration. It allows security teams to drive a unified, orchestrated response among security tools in different domains.
Competition
The market for our solutions is competitive and characterized by an evolving IT environment, customer requirements, industry standards and by frequent new product and service offerings and improvements. We compete with an array of established and emerging security solution vendors.
Our competitors include the following:
•endpoint security providers, such as CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (Crowdstrike) and VMware, Inc. (VMware);
•legacy antivirus providers such as Trellix (formerly McAfee Corp.), Symantec (a subsidiary of Broadcom, Inc.) (Symantec), and Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft); and
•providers of general network security products and services who offer a broad portfolio of solutions, such as Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (Palo Alto Networks)
We compete on the basis of a number of factors, including but not limited to our:
•ability of our technology to detect, prevent, and block threats;
•breadth of our functionality;
•ability to automate threat prevention and remediation with limited human intervention;
•performance of our platform;
•speed of our threat hunting capabilities;
•support for cloud, hybrid, and on-premise deployments;
•support for various operating systems;
•platform data retention capabilities;
•ability to integrate with other participants in the security ecosystem;
•ease of use to deploy, manage, and maintain our platform;
•quality of our MDR service;
•strength of sales, marketing, and channel partner relationships; and
•customer support.
Although certain of our competitors enjoy greater brand awareness and recognition, deep customer relationships, and larger existing customer bases, we believe that we compete favorably with respect to our autonomous and AI-powered threat prevention, detection, response, and hunting capabilities.
Intellectual Property
The protection of our technology and intellectual property is an important aspect of our business. We rely upon a combination of trademarks, trade secrets, know-how, copyrights, patents, confidentiality procedures, contractual commitments, domain names, and other legal rights to establish and protect our intellectual property. We generally enter into confidentiality agreements and invention or work product assignment agreements with our officers, employees, agents, contractors, and business partners to control access to, and clarify ownership of, our proprietary information.
As of January 31, 2022, we had 22 issued patents and 15 pending patent applications in the United States and abroad. These patents and patent applications seek to protect our proprietary inventions relevant to our business. These issued patents are scheduled to expire on or around the years between 2034 and 2040 and cover various aspects of our platform and technology.
As of January 31, 2022, we had six trademark registrations in the United States, including registrations for “SentinelOne” and our logo. We also had 41 trademark registrations and applications in certain foreign jurisdictions. Additionally, we are the registered holder of a number of domain names, including sentinelone.com.
Government Regulation
We are subject to many varying laws and regulations in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and throughout the world, including those related to privacy, data protection, intellectual property, consumer protection, marketing, advertising, employment and labor, competition, customs and international trade, taxation, and more. As we grow and expand our geographical reach, we may become subject to additional regulations in the United States and internationally.
These laws often require companies to implement specific information security controls to protect certain types of information, such as personal data. These laws and regulations are constantly evolving and may be interpreted, applied, created, or amended in a manner that could harm our current or future business. Our compliance with these laws and regulations may be onerous and could, individually or in the aggregate, increase our cost of doing business, impact our competitive position relative to our peers, and/or otherwise adversely affect our business, reputation, operating results and financial condition. See the section titled “Risk Factors” for additional information about the laws and regulations we are subject to and the risks of our business associated with such laws and regulations.
Corporate Information
We were incorporated in the State of Delaware as Sentinel Labs, Inc. in January 2013. We changed our name to SentinelOne, Inc. in March 2021. Our principal executive offices are located at 444 Castro Street, Suite 400, Mountain View, California 94041. Our telephone number is (855) 868-3733. We completed our initial public offering of shares of our Class A common stock in July 2021.
SentinelOne, the SentinelOne logo, and other registered or common law trade names, trademarks, or service marks of SentinelOne appearing in this prospectus are the property of SentinelOne. This prospectus contains additional trade names, trademarks, and service marks of ours and of other companies. We do not intend our use or display of other companies’ trade names, trademarks, or service marks to imply a relationship with these other companies, or endorsement or sponsorship of us by these other companies. Other trademarks appearing in this prospectus are the property of their respective holders. Solely for convenience, our trademarks and trade names referred to in this prospectus appear without the ® and ™ symbols, but those references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights, or the right of the applicable licensor, to these trademarks and trade names.
Available Information
We file electronically with the SEC our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Exchange Act. The SEC maintains a website at www.sec.gov that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information that we file with the SEC electronically. We will make available on our website at www.sentinelone.com, free of charge, copies of these reports and other information as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC.
We use our investor relations page on our website (www.sentinelone.com), press releases, public conference calls, public webcasts, our Twitter account (@SentinelOne), our Facebook page, and our LinkedIn page as means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. The information disclosed by the foregoing channels could be deemed to be material information. As such, we encourage investors, the media, and others to follow the channels listed above and to review the information
disclosed through such channels. Any updates to the list of disclosure channels through which we will announce information will be posted on the investor relations page on our website.
The contents of the websites referred to above are not incorporated into this filing. Further, our references to the URLs for these websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.
ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” and our consolidated financial statements and the accompanying notes. Our business, financial condition, operating results, or prospects could also be adversely affected by risks and uncertainties that are not presently known to us or that we currently believe are not material. If any of the risks actually occur, our business, financial condition, operating results, and prospects could be adversely affected. In that event, the market price of our Class A common stock could decline, and you could lose all or part of your investment.
Summary Risk Factors
Our business is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including those risks more fully described below. These risks include, among others, the following, which we consider our most material risks:
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
•We have a limited operating history, which makes it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects and increases the risks associated with your investment.
•We have a history of losses, anticipate increases in our operating expenses in the future, and may not achieve or sustain profitability. If we cannot achieve and sustain profitability, our business, operating results, and financial condition will be adversely affected.
•We face intense competition and could lose market share to our competitors, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•Our operating results may fluctuate significantly, which could make our future results difficult to predict and could cause our operating results to fall below expectations.
•A network or data security incident against us, whether actual, alleged, or perceived, would harm our reputation, create liability, and regulatory exposure, and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•Defects, errors, or vulnerabilities in our platform, the failure of our platform to block malware or prevent a security breach, misuse of our platform, or risks of product liability claims would harm our reputation and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•Existing and future acquisitions, strategic investments, partnerships or alliances could be difficult to identify and integrate, divert the attention of key management personnel, disrupt our business, dilute stockholder value and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•If we are unable to retain our customers, renew and expand our relationships with them, and add new customers, we may not be able to sustain revenue growth, and we may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future.
•If our platform is not effectively interoperated within our customers’ IT infrastructure, deployments could be delayed or canceled, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•Disruptions or other business interruptions that affect the availability of our platform could adversely affect our customer relationships and overall business.
•We may not be able to timely and cost-effectively scale and adapt our existing technology to meet our customers’ performance and other requirements.
•If we are unable to maintain successful relationships with our channel partners and alliance partners, or if our channel partners or alliance partners fail to perform, our ability to market, sell and distribute our platform will be limited, and our business, operating results, and financial condition will be harmed.
Risks Related to Regulatory Matters
•If we fail to adequately protect personal information or other information we collect, process, share, or maintain under applicable laws, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Risks Related to Our People
•We rely on our management team and other key employees and will need additional personnel to grow our business, and the loss of one or more key employees or our inability to hire, integrate, train, manage, retain, and motivate qualified personnel, including members of our board of directors, could harm our business.
Risks Related to our Intellectual Property
•Our proprietary rights may be difficult to enforce, which could enable others to copy or use aspects of our platform without compensating us.
•Third parties have claimed and may claim in the future that our platform infringes their intellectual property rights and this may create liability for us or otherwise adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Class A Common Stock
•The market price of our class A common stock may be volatile, and you could lose all or part of your investment.
•The dual class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting control with certain stockholders who held our capital stock prior to the completion of our initial public offering (IPO), including our directors, executive officers, and beneficial owners of 5% or greater of our outstanding capital stock who hold in the aggregate approximately 89% of the voting power of our capital stock, which will limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters, including the election of directors and the approval of any change of control transaction.
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
We have a limited operating history, which makes it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects and increases the risks associated with your investment.
We were founded in January 2013 and released our first endpoint security solution in February 2015. Our limited operating history and financial data may make it difficult to evaluate our current business, future prospects and other trends. We have encountered, and will continue to encounter risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing industries and sectors, such as the risks and uncertainties described herein. Any predictions about our future revenue and expenses may not be as accurate as they would be if we had a longer operating history or operated in a more predictable or established market. If our assumptions regarding these risks and uncertainties are incorrect or change due to fluctuations in our markets or otherwise, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our operating and financial results could differ materially from our expectations and our business and operating results would
be adversely affected. We cannot assure you that we will be successful in addressing these and other challenges we may face in the future.
We have a history of losses, anticipate increases in our operating expenses in the future, and may not achieve or sustain profitability. If we cannot achieve and sustain profitability, our business, operating results, and financial condition will be adversely affected.
We have incurred net losses in all periods since our inception, and we may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future. We experienced a net loss of $271.1 million, $117.6 million, and $76.6 million for fiscal 2022, 2021, and 2020, respectively. As of January 31, 2022, we had an accumulated deficit of $621.7 million. While we have experienced significant growth in revenue in recent periods, we cannot predict when or whether we will reach or maintain profitability. We also expect our operating expenses to increase in the future as we continue to invest for our future growth, including expanding our research and development function to drive further development of our platform, expanding our sales and marketing activities, developing the functionality to expand into adjacent markets, and reaching customers in new geographic locations, which will negatively affect our operating results if our total revenue does not increase. In addition to the anticipated costs to grow our business, we have incurred and expect to continue to incur significant additional legal, accounting, and other expenses as a public company. Our revenue growth is expected to slow or decline, and our revenue may decline for a number of other reasons, including reduced demand for our platform, increased competition, a decrease in the growth or reduction in size of our overall market, or if we cannot capitalize on growth opportunities, including acquisitions, new products, services, and feature releases. If we fail to increase our revenue to offset increases in our operating expenses, or manage our costs as we invest in our business, we may not achieve or sustain profitability.
We face intense competition and could lose market share to our competitors, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
The market for cybersecurity products and services is intensely competitive, fragmented and is rapidly evolving, characterized by changes in technology, customer requirements, industry standards, increasingly sophisticated attackers and by frequent introductions of new or improved products and services. We expect to continue to face intense competition from current competitors, as well as from new entrants into the market. If we are unable to anticipate or react to these challenges, our competitive position could weaken, and we would experience a decline in revenue or reduced revenue growth, and loss of market share that would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our competitors and potential competitors include the following:
•endpoint security providers, such as CrowdStrike and VMware;
•legacy anti-virus providers such as Trellix, Symantec, and Microsoft; and
•providers of general network security products and services who offer a broad portfolio of solutions, such as Palo Alto Networks.
Our ability to compete effectively depends upon numerous factors, many of which are beyond our control, including, but not limited to:
•our ability to attract and retain new customers, expand our platform or sell additional products and services to our existing customers;
•our ability to attract, train, retain, and motivate talented employees;
•the budgeting cycles, seasonal buying patterns, and purchasing practices of our customers, including any slowdown in technology spending due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and market downturns;
•changes in customer, distributor or reseller requirements or market needs;
•price competition;
•the timing and success of new product and service introductions by us or our competitors or any other change in the competitive landscape of our industry, including consolidation among our competitors or customers and strategic partnerships entered into by and between our competitors;
•changes in our mix of products, subscriptions and services sold, including changes in the average contract length for subscriptions and support;
•our ability to successfully and continuously expand our business domestically and internationally;
•changes in the growth rate of the endpoint security market or endpoint and cloud security solutions sectors;
•deferral of orders from customers in anticipation of new or enhanced products and services announced by us or our competitors;
•significant security breaches of, technical difficulties with or interruptions to, the use of our platform;
•the timing and costs related to the development or acquisition of technologies or businesses or strategic partnerships;
•our ability to execute, complete or integrate efficiently any acquisitions that we may undertake;
•increased expenses, unforeseen liabilities, or write-downs and any impact on our operating results from any acquisitions we consummate;
•our ability to increase the size and productivity of our distribution channels;
•decisions by potential customers to purchase security solutions from larger, more established security vendors or from their primary network equipment vendors;
•timing of revenue recognition and revenue deferrals;
•insolvency or credit difficulties confronting our customers, which could increase due to the continuing effects of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic and adversely affect their ability to purchase or pay for our platform, products, and services in a timely manner or at all;
•the cost and potential outcomes of litigation, which could have a material adverse effect on our business;
•future accounting pronouncements or changes in our accounting policies;
•increases or decreases in our expenses caused by fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; and
•general macroeconomic conditions, both domestically and in our foreign markets that could impact some or all regions where we operate, including any global economic slowdown, increased risk of inflation, and potential global recession.
Many of our competitors have greater financial, technical, marketing, sales, and other resources, greater name recognition, longer operating histories, and a larger base of customers than we do. Our competitors may be able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their products and services than we can, and they may offer lower pricing than we do or bundle certain competing products and services at lower price. Our competitors may also have greater resources for
research and development of new technologies, customer support and to pursue acquisitions, or they may have other financial, technical, or other resource advantages. Our larger competitors have substantially broader and more diverse product and service offerings and more mature distribution and go-to-market strategies, which allows them to leverage their existing customer and distributor relationships to gain business in a manner that discourages potential customers from purchasing our platform.
Conditions in our market could change rapidly and significantly as a result of technological advancements, partnering or acquisitions by our competitors or continuing market consolidation. Some of our competitors have recently made or could make acquisitions of businesses or have established cooperative relationships that may allow them to offer more directly competitive and comprehensive products and services than were previously offered and adapt more quickly to new technologies and customer needs. These competitive pressures in our market or our failure to compete effectively may result in price reductions, fewer orders, reduced revenue and gross margin, increased net losses and loss of market share. Even if there is significant demand for endpoint security solutions like ours, if our competitors include functionality that is, or is perceived to be, equivalent to or better than ours in legacy products that are already generally accepted as necessary components of an organization’s IT security architecture, we will have difficulty increasing the market penetration of our platform. Furthermore, even if the functionality offered by other cybersecurity providers is different and more limited than the functionality of our platform, organizations may elect to accept such limited functionality in lieu of purchasing products and services from additional vendors like us. If we are unable to compete successfully, or if competing successfully requires us to take aggressive action with respect to pricing or other actions, our business, financial condition and operating results would be adversely affected.
Our operating results may fluctuate significantly, which could make our future results difficult to predict and could cause our operating results to fall below expectations.
Our operating results have varied significantly from period to period in the past, and we expect that our operating results will continue to vary significantly in the future such that period-to-period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful. This could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Accordingly, our financial results in any one quarter should not be relied upon as indicative of future performance. Fluctuation in quarterly results may negatively impact the trading price of our Class A common stock. Our quarterly financial results may fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, many of which are outside of our control and may be difficult to predict, including, without limitation:
•the continuing impact of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic on our operations, financial results, and liquidity and capital resources, including on customers, sales, expenses, and employees;
•our ability to attract new and retain existing customers or sell additional features to existing customers;
•the budgeting cycles, seasonal buying patterns, and purchasing practices of customers;
•the timing and length of our sales cycles;
•changes in customer or channel partner requirements or market needs;
•changes in the growth rate of the cybersecurity market generally and market for endpoint security;
•the timing and success of new product and service introductions by us or our competitors or any other competitive developments, including consolidation among our customers or competitors;
•the level of awareness of cybersecurity threats, particularly advanced cyberattacks, and the market adoption of our platform;
•our ability to successfully expand our business domestically and internationally;
•decisions by organizations to purchase security solutions from larger, more established security vendors or from their primary IT equipment vendors;
•changes in our pricing policies or those of our competitors;
•any disruption in our relationship with ISVs, channel partners, MSPs, MSSPs, MDRs, OEMs and IR firms;
•insolvency or credit difficulties confronting our customers, affecting their ability to purchase or pay for our solution;
•significant security breaches of, technical difficulties with or interruptions to, the use of our platform;
•extraordinary expenses such as litigation or other dispute-related settlement payments or outcomes, taxes, regulatory fines or penalties;
•general political, economic and macroeconomic conditions, both domestic and in our foreign markets, including as a result of war, terrorism or armed conflict, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine;
•future accounting pronouncements or changes in our accounting policies or practices;
•negative media coverage or publicity;
•the amount and timing of operating costs and capital expenditures related to the expansion of our business; and
•increases or decreases in our expenses caused by fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates.
In addition, we experience seasonal fluctuations in our financial results as we typically receive a higher percentage of our annual orders from new customers, as well as renewal orders from existing customers, in our fourth fiscal quarter as compared to other quarters due to the annual budget approval process of many of our customers.
Any of the above factors, individually or in the aggregate, may result in significant fluctuations in our financial and other operating results from period to period. As a result of this variability, our historical operating results should not be relied upon as an indication of future performance. Moreover, this variability and unpredictability could result in our failure to meet our operating plan or the expectations of investors or analysts for any period. If we fail to meet such expectations for the reasons described above or other reasons, our stock price could fall substantially, and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class action suits.
Our platform represents a new approach to endpoint protection and, therefore, it is difficult to predict adoption and demand for our platform.
Our cloud-native, artificial intelligence-enabled endpoint security platform represents a new approach to endpoint protection. Accordingly, it is difficult to predict customer adoption and demand for our platform, the size and growth rate of this market, the entry of competitive products and services or the success of existing competitive products and services.
Any expansion in our market depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance and perceived value associated with, and customer adoption of, our platform. If the market for our platform does not achieve widespread adoption or there is a reduction in demand for our software or our services in our market caused by a lack of customer acceptance, implementation challenges for deployment, technological challenges, competing technologies and services, decreases in corporate spending, weakening
economic conditions, or otherwise, it could result in reduced customer orders and decreased revenue, which would adversely affect our business operations and financial condition.
Our platform interoperates with, but does not necessarily replace, other security products. Businesses that use other cybersecurity products and services may be hesitant to purchase our platform if they believe their existing products and services provide a level of security that is sufficient to meet their needs. If we do not succeed in convincing customers that our platform should be an integral part of their overall approach to security, our sales will not grow as quickly as anticipated, or at all, which would have an adverse impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
If businesses do not continue to adopt our platform for any of the reasons discussed above or for other reasons not contemplated, our sales would not grow as quickly as anticipated, or at all, and our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
A network or data security incident against us, whether actual, alleged, or perceived, would harm our reputation, create liability, and regulatory exposure, and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Companies are subject to an increasing number and wide variety of attacks on their networks on an ongoing basis. Traditional computer “hackers,” malicious code (such as viruses and worms), phishing attempts, employee theft or misuse, denial of service attacks, and sophisticated nation-state and nation-state supported actors engage in intrusions and attacks that create risks for our internal networks and cloud deployed products and the information they store and process. Cybersecurity companies face particularly intense attack efforts, and we have faced, and will continue to face, cyber threats and attacks from a variety of sources. The research that we conduct and report may make us, or our customers, a further target for attacks for all kinds. State-supported and geopolitical-related cyberattacks may increase in connection with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and any related political or economic responses and counter-responses. Although we have implemented security measures to prevent such attacks, our networks and systems may be breached due to the actions of outside parties, employee error, malfeasance, a combination of these, or otherwise, and as a result, an unauthorized party may obtain access to our systems, networks, or data. We may face difficulties or delays in identifying or otherwise responding to any attacks or actual or potential security breaches or threats. A breach in our data security or an attack against our platform could impact our networks or the networks of our customers that are secured by our platform, creating system disruptions or slowdowns and providing access to malicious parties to information stored on our networks or the networks of our customers, resulting in data being publicly disclosed, altered, lost, or stolen, which could subject us to liability and adversely affect our financial condition. The COVID-19 pandemic may have generally increased the attack surface available to criminals, as companies and individuals work online and work remotely, and as such, the risk of a cybersecurity incident potentially occurring, and our investment in risk mitigations against such an incident, is increasing. Moreover, globally there has been an increase in cybersecurity attacks since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Any actual, alleged or perceived security breach in our systems or networks, or any other actual, alleged or perceived data security incident we suffer, could result in damage to our reputation, negative publicity, loss of customers and sales, loss of competitive advantages over our competitors, increased costs to remedy any problems and otherwise respond to any incident, regulatory investigations and enforcement actions, costly litigation, and other liability. We would also be exposed to a risk of loss or litigation and potential liability under laws, regulations and contracts that protect the privacy and security of personal information. For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA), imposes a private right of action for security breaches that could lead to some form of remedy including regulatory scrutiny, fines, private right of action settlements, and other consequences. Where a security incident involves a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alternation, unauthorized disclosure of, or access to, personal data in respect of which we are a controller or processor under the GDPR (U.K. GDPR) (as defined below), this could result in fines of up to €20 million or 4% of annual global turnover under the GDPR or £17 million and 4% of total annual revenue in the case of the U.K. GDPR. We may also be required to notify such breaches to regulators and/or individuals which may result in us incurring additional costs.
In addition, we may incur significant financial and operational costs to investigate, remediate, eliminate and put in place additional tools and devices designed to prevent actual or perceived security breaches and other security incidents, as well as costs to comply with any notification obligations resulting from any security incidents. Any of these negative outcomes could adversely affect the market perception of our platform and customer and investor confidence in our company, and would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Defects, errors, or vulnerabilities in our platform, the failure of our platform to block malware or prevent a security breach, misuse of our platform, or risks of product liability claims would harm our reputation and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our platform and product features are multi-faceted and may be deployed with material defects, software “bugs” or errors that are not detected until after their commercial release and deployment to our customers. From time to time, certain of our customers have reported defects in our platform related to performance, scalability, and compatibility. Our platform and product features also provide our customers with the ability to customize a multitude of settings, and it is possible that a customer could misconfigure our platform or otherwise fail to configure our products in an optimal manner. Such defects and misconfigurations of our platform could cause our platform to operate at suboptimal efficacy, cause it to fail to secure customers’ computing environments and detect and block threats or temporarily interrupt the functionality of our customers’ endpoints. We also make frequent updates to our platform, which may fail, resulting in temporary vulnerability that increases the likelihood of a material defect.
In addition, because the techniques used by computer hackers to access or sabotage target computing environments change frequently and generally are not recognized until launched against a target, there is a risk that an advanced attack could emerge that our platform is unable to detect or prevent. Furthermore, as a well-known provider of security solutions, our networks, platform, products, including cloud-based technology, and customers could be targeted by attacks specifically designed to disrupt our business and harm our reputation. In addition, defects or errors in our platform could result in a failure to effectively update customers’ cloud-based products. Our data centers and networks may experience technical failures and downtime, may fail to distribute appropriate updates, or may fail to meet the increased requirements of a growing customer base, any of which could temporarily or permanently expose our customers’ computing environments, leaving their computing environments unprotected against cyber threats. Any of these situations could result in negative publicity to us, damage our reputation, and increase expenses and customer relations issues, which would adversely affect our business, financial condition, and operating results.
Advances in computer capabilities, discoveries of new weaknesses and other developments with software generally used by the Internet community may increase the risk we will suffer a security breach. Furthermore, our platform may fail to detect or prevent malware, ransomware, viruses, worms or similar threats for any number of reasons, including our failure to enhance and expand our platform to reflect industry trends, new technologies and new operating environments, the complexity of the environment of our clients and the sophistication of malware, viruses and other threats. Our platform may fail to detect or prevent threats in any particular test for a number of reasons. We or our service providers may also suffer security breaches or unauthorized access to personal information, financial account information, and other confidential information due to employee error, rogue employee activity, unauthorized access by third parties acting with malicious intent or who commit an inadvertent mistake or social engineering. If we experience, or our service provides experience any breaches of security measures or sabotage or otherwise suffer unauthorized use or disclosure of, or access to, personal information, financial account information or other confidential information, we might be required to expend significant capital and resources to address these problems. We may not be able to remedy any problems caused by hackers or other similar actors in a timely manner, or at all. To the extent potential customers, industry analysts or testing firms believe that the failure to detect or prevent any particular threat is a flaw or indicates that our platform does not provide significant value, our reputation and business would be harmed. Any real or perceived defects,
errors or vulnerabilities in our platform, or any other failure of our platform to detect an advanced threat, could result in:
•a loss of existing or potential customers;
•delayed or lost revenue and adverse impacts to our business, operating results, and financial condition;
•a delay in attaining, or the failure to attain, market acceptance;
•the expenditure of significant financial and research and development resources in efforts to analyze, correct, eliminate, or work around errors or defects, and address and eliminate vulnerabilities;
•an increase in resources devoted to customer service and support, which could adversely affect our gross margin;
•harm to our reputation or brand; and
•claims and litigation, regulatory inquiries, or investigations, enforcement actions, and other claims and liabilities, all of which may be costly and burdensome and further harm our reputation.
Because techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or to sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not recognized until after they are launched against a target, we and our service providers may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. Moreover, if a high-profile cybersecurity incident occurs with respect to another SaaS, provider, customers may lose trust in the security of the SaaS business model generally, which could adversely affect our ability to retain existing customers or attract new ones. In the last few years there have been many successful advanced cybersecurity incidents that have damaged several prominent companies in spite of strong information security measures. For example, SolarWinds Corporation, a provider of IT monitoring and management products and services, experienced a cyberattack that appears likely to be the result of a supply chain attack by an outside nation state, resulting in vulnerabilities being included in software updates related to its Orion Platform products delivered between March and June 2020. We expect that the risks associated with cybersecurity incidents and the costs of preventing such attacks will continue to increase in the future.
In addition, we cannot assure you that any limitation of liability provisions in our customer agreements, contracts with third-party vendors and service providers, or other contracts would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from any liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim relating to a security breach or other security-related matter or as a result of federal, state, or local laws or ordinances, or unfavorable judicial decisions in the U.S. or other countries. We maintain insurance to protect against certain claims associated with the use of our platform, but our insurance coverage may not adequately cover any claim asserted against us. In addition, even claims that ultimately are unsuccessful could result in our expenditure of funds in litigation, divert management’s time and other resources, and harm our reputation. We also cannot be certain that our insurance coverage will be adequate for data handling or data security liabilities actually incurred, that insurance will continue to be available to us on economically reasonable terms, or at all, or that any future claim will not be excluded or otherwise be denied coverage by any insurer. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
Existing and future acquisitions, strategic investments, partnerships or alliances could be difficult to identify and integrate, divert the attention of key management personnel, disrupt our business, dilute stockholder value and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
As part of our business strategy, we have in the past and expect to continue to make investments in and/or acquire complementary companies, services, products, technologies, or talent. For example, in fiscal 2022 we acquired Scalyr, a data analytics company, and invested in certain private companies. In March 2022, we also announced that we signed a definitive agreement to acquire Attivo, a leading security and lateral movement protection company. Our ability as an organization to acquire and integrate other companies, services or technologies in a successful manner is not guaranteed.
In the future, we may not be able to find suitable acquisition candidates, and we may not be able to complete such acquisitions on favorable terms, if at all. Our due diligence efforts may fail to identify all of the problems, liabilities or other shortcomings or challenges involved in an acquisition. If we do complete acquisitions, we may not ultimately strengthen our competitive position or ability to achieve our business objectives, and any acquisitions we announce or complete could be viewed negatively by our customers or investors.
In addition, if we are unsuccessful at integrating existing and future acquisitions, or the technologies and personnel associated with such acquisitions, into our company, the revenue and operating results of the combined company could be adversely affected. Any integration process may require significant time and resources, and we may not be able to manage the process successfully. We may not successfully evaluate or utilize the acquired technology or personnel, or accurately forecast the financial impact of an acquisition transaction, causing unanticipated write-offs or accounting charges. Additionally, integrations could take longer than expected, or if we move too quickly in trying to integrate an acquisition, strategic investment, partnership, or other alliance, we may fail to achieve the desired efficiencies.
We have, and may in the future have to pay cash, incur debt or issue equity securities to pay for any such acquisition, each of which could adversely affect our financial condition and the market price of our Class A common stock. The sale of equity or issuance of debt to finance any such acquisitions could result in dilution to our stockholders, which depending on the size of the acquisition, may be significant. The incurrence of indebtedness would result in increased fixed obligations and could also include covenants or other restrictions that would impede our ability to manage our operations.
Additional risks we may face in connection with acquisitions include:
•diversion of management’s time and focus from operating our business to addressing acquisition integration challenges;
•the inability to coordinate research and development and sales and marketing functions;
•the inability to integrate product and service offerings;
•retention of key employees from the acquired company;
•changes in relationships with strategic partners or the loss of any key customers or partners as a result of product acquisitions or strategic positioning resulting from the acquisition;
•cultural challenges associated with integrating employees from the acquired company into our organization;
•integration of the acquired company’s accounting, CRM, management information, human resources and other administrative systems;
•the need to implement or improve controls, procedures and policies at a business that prior to the acquisition may have lacked sufficiently effective controls, procedures and policies;
•unexpected security risks or higher than expected costs to improve the security posture of the acquired company;
•additional legal, regulatory or compliance requirements;
•financial reporting, revenue recognition or other financial or control deficiencies of the acquired company that we don’t adequately address and that cause our reported results to be incorrect;
•liability for activities of the acquired company before the acquisition, including intellectual property infringement claims, violations of laws, commercial disputes, tax liabilities and other known and unknown liabilities;
•failing to achieve the expected benefits of the acquisition or investment; and
•litigation or other claims in connection with the acquired company, including claims from terminated employees, customers, current and former stockholders or other third parties.
Our failure to address these risks or other problems encountered in connection with acquisitions and investments could cause us to fail to realize the anticipated benefits of these acquisitions or investments, cause us to incur unanticipated liabilities, and harm our business generally.
If we are unable to retain our customers, renew and expand our relationships with them, and add new customers, we may not be able to sustain revenue growth, and we may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future.
In recent periods, we have experienced rapid growth in the adoption of our platform, customer base and revenue. However, we may not continue to grow or grow at the same rate in the future. Any success that we may experience in the future will depend, in large part, on our ability to, among other things:
•maintain, renew and expand our existing customer base;
•continue to attract new customers;
•induce customers to expand deployment of the initially adopted module(s) of our platform across their organizations and infrastructure, and to adopt additional modules of our platform and services;
•improve the capabilities of our platform through research and development;
•continue to successfully expand our business domestically and internationally; and
•successfully compete with other companies in the endpoint security industry.
Our customers have no obligation to renew their subscription for our platform after the expiration of their contractual subscription period, which is generally one to three years, and in the normal course of business, some customers have elected not to renew. In addition, our customers may renew for shorter contract subscription lengths or cease using certain features. Our customer retention and expansion may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with our services, our pricing, customer security and networking issues and requirements, our customers’ spending levels, decreases in the number of endpoints to which our customers deploy our solution, mergers and acquisitions involving our customers, industry developments, competition, general economic conditions, or the perceived decline in the incidence of cyberattacks. If our efforts to maintain and expand our relationships with our existing customers are not successful, our business, operating results, and financial condition will materially suffer.
If our platform is not effectively interoperated within our customers’ IT infrastructure, deployments could be delayed or canceled, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our platform must effectively interoperate with our customers’ existing IT infrastructure, which often has different specifications, utilizes multiple protocol standards, deploys products and services from multiple vendors, and contains multiple generations of products and services that have been added over time. As a result, our solutions can sometimes encounter interoperability issues on deployment or over time, which require additional support and problem solving with customers, in some cases, at a substantial cost to us. We may modify our software or introduce new capabilities so that our platform interoperates with a customer’s infrastructure. These issues could cause longer deployment and integration times for our platform, leading to customer churn, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. In addition, government and other customers may require our platform to comply with certain security or other certifications and standards. If we are unable to achieve, or are delayed in achieving, compliance with these certifications and standards, we may be disqualified from selling our platform to such customers, or may otherwise be at a competitive disadvantage, either of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Disruptions or other business interruptions that affect the availability of our platform could adversely affect our customer relationships and overall business.
Our platform is hosted through AWS. Our software and systems are designed to use computing, storage capabilities, bandwidth, and other services provided by AWS, and currently our cloud service infrastructure is run on AWS. We have experienced, and expect in the future that we may experience from time to time, interruptions, delays or outages in service availability due to a variety of factors. Capacity constraints could arise from a number of causes such as technical failures, natural disasters, fraud, or security attacks. The level of service provided by AWS, or regular or prolonged interruptions in that service, could also impact the use of, and our customers’ satisfaction with, our platform and could harm our business and reputation. In addition, hosting costs will increase as our customer base grows, which could adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
Furthermore, AWS has discretion to change and interpret its terms of service and other policies with respect to us, including on contract renewal, and those actions may be unfavorable to our business operations. AWS may also take actions beyond our control that could seriously harm our business, including discontinuing or limiting our access to one or more AWS services, increasing pricing terms, competing with us, terminating or seeking to terminate our contractual relationship altogether, or altering how we are able to process data on AWS in a way that is unfavorable or costly to us. Although we expect to obtain similar services from other third parties, if our arrangement with AWS were terminated, we could experience interruptions on our platform and in our ability to make our content available to customers, as well as delays and additional expenses in arranging for alternative cloud infrastructure services. Such a transition may require technical changes to our platform, including, but not limited to, our cloud service infrastructure which was designed to run on AWS. Making such changes could be costly in terms of time and financial resources.
Any of these factors could reduce our revenue, subject us to liability, and cause our customers to decline to renew their subscriptions, any of which would harm our business and operating results.
We may not timely and cost-effectively scale and adapt our existing technology to meet our customers’ performance and other requirements.
Our future growth is dependent upon our ability to continue to meet the needs of new customers and the expanding needs of our existing customers as their use of our solutions grows. As our customers gain more experience with our platform, the number of endpoints and events, the amount of data transferred, processed and stored by us, and the number of locations where our platform is being accessed, have in the past, and may in the future, expand rapidly. In order to meet the performance and other requirements of our customers, we intend to continue to make significant investments to increase capacity and to develop and implement new technologies in our service and cloud infrastructure operations. These technologies, which include databases, applications, and server optimizations, network and hosting strategies, and automation, are often advanced, complex, new and untested. We may not be successful in developing or implementing
these technologies. In addition, it takes a significant amount of time to plan, develop and test improvements to our technologies and infrastructure, and we may not be able to accurately forecast demand or predict the results we will realize from such improvements. In some circumstances, we may also determine to scale our technology through the acquisition of complementary businesses and technologies rather than through internal development, which may divert management’s time and resources. To the extent that we do not effectively scale our operations to meet the needs of our growing customer base and to maintain performance as our customers expand their use of our solution, we will not be able to grow as quickly as we anticipate, our customers may reduce or cancel use of our solutions and we will be unable to compete as effectively and our business and operating results will be adversely affected.
If we do not accurately anticipate and promptly respond to changes in our customers’ technologies, business plans or security needs, our competitive position and prospects will be adversely affected.
The cybersecurity market has grown quickly and is expected to continue to evolve rapidly. Moreover, many of our customers operate in markets characterized by rapidly changing technologies and business plans, which require them to add numerous network-connected endpoints and adapt to increasingly complex IT environments, incorporating a variety of hardware, software applications, operating systems, and networking protocols. As their technologies and business plans grow more complex, we expect these customers to face new and increasingly sophisticated methods of attack. We face significant challenges in ensuring that our platform effectively identifies and responds to these advanced and evolving attacks. As a result of the continued rapid innovations in the technology industry, including the rapid growth of smartphones, tablets and other devices, enterprise employees using personal devices for work, and the rapidly evolving Internet of Things, we expect the networks of our customers to continue to change rapidly and become more complex. There can be no assurance that we will be successful in developing and marketing, on a timely basis, enhancements to our platform that adequately address the changing needs of our customers. In addition, any enhancements to our platform could involve research and development processes that are more complex, expensive and time-consuming than we anticipate. We may experience unanticipated delays in the availability of enhancements to our platform and may fail to meet customer expectations with respect to the timing of such availability. If we do not quickly respond to the rapidly changing and rigorous needs of our customers by developing and releasing updates to our platform on a timely basis that can adequately respond to advanced threats and our customers’ evolving needs, our business, operating results, and financial condition will be adversely affected.
If we are not able to maintain and enhance our brand and reputation, our business and operating results may be adversely affected.
We believe that maintaining and enhancing our brand and our reputation as a leading provider of endpoint security solutions is critical to our relationship with our existing customers, channel partners, and alliance partners and our ability to attract new customers and partners. The successful promotion of our brand will depend on a number of factors, including our ability to continue to develop additional features for our platform, our ability to successfully differentiate our platform from competitive cloud-based or legacy security solutions, our marketing efforts, and, ultimately, our ability to detect and stop breaches. Although we believe it is important for our growth, our brand promotion activities may not be successful or yield increased revenue.
Under certain circumstances, our employees may have access to our customers’ platforms. An employee may take advantage of such access to conduct malicious activities. Any such misuse of our platform could result in negative press coverage and negatively affect our reputation, which could result in harm to our business, reputation, and operating results.
In addition, independent industry and research firms often evaluate our solutions and provide reviews of our platform, as well as the products of our competitors, and perception of our platform in the marketplace may be significantly influenced by these reviews. If these reviews are negative, or less positive as compared to those of our competitors’ products, our brand may be adversely affected. Our solutions may fail to detect or prevent threats in any particular test for a number of reasons that may or may not be related
to the efficacy of our solutions in real world environments. To the extent potential customers, industry analysts or research firms believe that the occurrence of a failure to detect or prevent any particular threat is a flaw or indicates that our solutions or services do not provide significant value, we may lose customers, and our reputation, financial condition and business would be harmed.
Moreover, the performance of our channel partners and alliance partners may affect our brand and reputation if customers do not have a positive experience with these partners. In addition, we have in the past worked, and continue to work, with high profile customers as well as assist in analyzing and remediating high profile cyberattacks. Our work with such customers has exposed us to publicity and media coverage. Negative publicity about us, including about our management, the efficacy and reliability of our platform, our products offerings, our professional services, and the customers we work with, even if inaccurate, could adversely affect our reputation and brand.
If we are unable to maintain successful relationships with our channel partners and alliance partners, or if our channel partners or alliance partners fail to perform, our ability to market, sell and distribute our platform will be limited, and our business, operating results, and financial condition will be harmed.
Substantially all of our sales are fulfilled through our channel partners, including resellers, distributors, MSPs, MSSPs, MDRs, OEMs, and IR firms, and we expect that we will continue to generate a significant portion of our revenue from channel partners for the foreseeable future. Our channel partners generated 92%, 96%, and 92% of our revenue for fiscal 2022, 2021, and 2020, respectively. Our two largest channel partners for fiscal 2022, 2021, and 2020 were Exclusive Networks and SHI International Corp. We generated 18%, 19%, and 19% of our revenue from Exclusive Networks for fiscal 2022, 2021, and 2020, respectively. We generated *, 13%, and 14% of our revenue from SHI International for fiscal 2022, 2021, and 2020, respectively. Our agreements with our channel partners, including agreements with Exclusive Networks and SHI International, are non-exclusive, do not last for set terms, and may be terminated by either party at any time. Further, channel partners fulfill our sales on a purchase order basis and do not impose minimum purchase requirements or related terms on sales. Additionally, we have entered, and intend to continue to enter, into alliance partnerships with third parties to support our future growth plans. The loss of a substantial number of our channel partners or alliance partners, or the failure to recruit additional partners, would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
To the extent our partners are unsuccessful in selling our platform, or if we are unable to enter into arrangements with and retain a sufficient number of high-quality partners in each of the regions in which we sell or plan to sell our platform, we are unable to keep them motivated to sell our platform, or our partners shift focus to other vendors and/or our competitors, our ability to sell our platform and operating results will be harmed. The termination of our relationship with any significant partner may adversely affect our sales and operating results. Our ability to achieve revenue growth in the future will depend in part on our ability to maintain successful relationships with our channel partners and in training our channel partners to independently sell and deploy our platform.
We are also exposed to credit and liquidity risks and our operating results will be harmed if our partners were to become unable or unwilling to pay us, terminated their relationships with us or went out of business. Although we have programs in place that are designed to monitor and mitigate such risks, we cannot guarantee these programs will be effective in reducing our risks. If we are unable to adequately control these risks, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be harmed. If partners fail to pay us under the terms of our agreements or we are otherwise unable to collect on our accounts receivable from these partners, we may be adversely affected both from the inability to collect amounts due and the cost of enforcing the terms of our contracts, including litigation. Our partners may seek bankruptcy protection or other similar relief and fail to pay amounts due to us, or pay those amounts more slowly, either of which would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. We may be further impacted by consolidation of our existing channel partners. In such instances, we may experience changes to our overall business and operational relationships due to dealing with a larger combined entity, and our ability to maintain such relationships on favorable contractual terms may be more limited. We may also become increasingly dependent on a more limited number of channel partners, as consolidation
increases the relative proportion of our business for which each channel partner is responsible, which may magnify the risks described in the preceding paragraphs.
Our business depends, in part, on sales to government organizations, and significant changes in the contracting or fiscal policies of such government organizations could adversely affect our business and operating results.
Our future growth depends, in part, on increasing sales to government organizations. Demand from government organizations is often unpredictable and subject to budgetary uncertainty. We have made significant investments to address the government sector, but we cannot assure you that these investments will be successful, or that we will be able to maintain or grow our revenue from the government sector. Although we anticipate that they may increase in the future, sales to governmental organizations have not accounted for, and may never account for, a significant portion of our revenue. Sales to governmental organizations are subject to a number of challenges and risks that may adversely affect our business and operating results, including the following risks:
•selling to governmental agencies can be highly competitive, expensive, and time consuming, often requiring significant upfront time and expense without any assurance that such efforts will generate a sale;
•government certification, software supply chain or source code transparency requirements applicable to us or our platform may change and, in doing so, restrict our ability to sell into the governmental sector until we have attained the revised certification or meet other new requirements. For example, although we are currently FedRAMP certified, such certification is costly to maintain and subject to rigorous compliance and if we lose our certification, it would restrict our ability to sell to government customers;
•government demand and payment for our platform may be impacted by public sector budgetary cycles and funding authorizations, with funding reductions or delays adversely affecting public sector demand for our platform, including as a result of abrupt events such as government shut downs, war, incidents of terrorism, natural disasters, and public health concerns or epidemics;
•governments routinely investigate and audit government contractors’ administrative processes, and any unfavorable audit could result in the government refusing to continue buying our platform, which would adversely impact our revenue and operating results, or institute fines or civil or criminal liability if an investigation, audit, or other review, were to uncover improper or illegal activities;
•governments may require certain products to be manufactured, produced, hosted or accessed solely in their country or in other relatively high-cost locations, and we may not produce or host all products in locations that meet these requirements, affecting our ability to sell these products to governmental agencies; and
•refusal to grant certain certifications or clearance by one government agency, or decision by one government agency that our products do not meet certain standards, may cause reputational harm and cause concern with other government agencies.
The occurrence of any of the foregoing could cause governmental organizations to delay or refrain from purchasing our solutions in the future or otherwise adversely affect our business and operating results.
Our long-term success depends, in part, on our ability to expand the sale of our platform to customers located outside of the United States and our current, and any further, expansion of our international
operations exposes us to risks that could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We are generating a growing portion of our revenue outside of the United States, and conduct our business activities in various foreign countries, including some emerging markets where we have limited experience, where the challenges of conducting our business can be significantly different from those we have faced in more developed markets and where business practices may create internal control risks including:
•fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates, which could add volatility to our operating results;
•new, or changes in, regulatory requirements;
•tariffs, export and import restrictions, restrictions on foreign investments, sanctions, and other trade barriers or protection measures;
•we consider ourselves to be a processor under the GDPR/U.K. GDPR in some instances and a controller of personal data in other circumstances. For example, by expanding into the European Union (E.U.), and the United Kingdom (U.K.), we may also trigger Article 3(2) of the GDPR/U.K. GDPR as we may be considered to be monitoring data subjects. Additionally, where processing personal data on behalf of our E.U./U.K. customers or processing personal data of E.U./U.K. end users, we may be required to sign data processing agreements which comply with Article 28 of the GDPR/U.K. GDPR. Likewise, to the extent any of our E.U./U.K. entities directly contract with E.U./U.K. customers for the provision of services, we will be directly subject to the GDPR/U.K. GDPR as a processor when processing this personal data;
•costs of localizing products and services;
•lack of acceptance of localized products and services;
•the need to make significant investments in people, solutions and infrastructure, typically well in advance of revenue generation;
•challenges inherent in efficiently managing an increased number of employees over large geographic distances, including the need to implement appropriate systems, policies, benefits, and compliance programs;
•difficulties in maintaining our corporate culture with a dispersed and distant workforce;
•treatment of revenue from international sources, evolving domestic and international tax environments, and other potential tax issues, including with respect to our corporate operating structure and intercompany arrangements;
•different or weaker protection of our intellectual property, including increased risk of theft of our proprietary technology and other intellectual property;
•economic weakness or currency-related crises;
•compliance with multiple, conflicting, ambiguous or evolving governmental laws and regulations, including employment, tax, privacy, anti-corruption, import/export, antitrust, data transfer, storage and protection, and industry-specific laws and regulations, including rules related to compliance by our third-party resellers and our ability to identify and respond timely to compliance issues when they occur, and regulations applicable to us and our third-party data providers from whom we purchase and resell syndicated data;
•vetting and monitoring our third-party resellers in new and evolving markets to confirm they maintain standards consistent with our brand and reputation;
•generally longer payment cycles and greater difficulty in collecting accounts receivable;
•our ability to adapt to sales practices and customer requirements in different cultures;
•the lack of reference customers and other marketing assets in regional markets that are new or developing for us, as well as other adaptations in our market generation efforts that we may be slow to identify and implement;
•dependence on certain third parties, including resellers with whom we do not have extensive experience;
•natural disasters, acts of war, terrorism, or pandemics, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine;
•corporate espionage; and
•political instability and security risks in the countries where we are doing business and changes in the public perception of governments in the countries where we operate or plan to operate.
We have undertaken, and will continue to undertake, additional corporate operating restructurings from time to time that involve our group of foreign country subsidiaries through which we do business abroad. We consider various factors in evaluating these restructurings, including the alignment of our corporate legal entity structure with our organizational structure and its objectives, the operational and tax efficiency of our group structure, and the long-term cash flows and cash needs of our business. Such restructurings increase our operating costs, and if ineffectual, could increase our income tax liabilities and our global effective tax rate.
We have experienced rapid growth in recent periods, and if we do not effectively manage our future growth, our business, operating results, and financial condition may be adversely affected.
We have experienced rapid growth in recent periods, and we expect to continue to invest broadly across our organization to support our growth. For example, our headcount grew from over 700 employees as of January 31, 2021, to over 1,200 employees as of January 31, 2022. Although we have experienced rapid growth historically, we may not sustain our current growth rates, nor can we assure you that our investments to support our growth will be successful. The growth and expansion of our business will require us to invest significant financial and operational resources and the continuous dedication of our management team.
In addition, as we have grown, our number of customers has also increased significantly, and we have increasingly managed more complex deployments of our platform in more complex computing environments. The rapid growth and expansion of our business places a significant strain on our management, operational, and financial resources. To manage any future growth effectively, we must continue to improve and expand our information technology and financial infrastructure, our operating and administrative systems and controls, and our ability to manage headcount, capital, and processes in an efficient manner. Effectively managing our growth may also be more difficult to accomplish the longer that our employees work remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
If we continue to experience rapid growth, we may not be able to successfully implement or scale improvements to our systems, processes, and controls in an efficient or timely manner. For example, as we grow, we may experience difficulties in managing improvements to our systems, processes, and controls or in connection with third-party software licensed to help us with such improvements. As we grow, our existing systems, processes, and controls may not prevent or detect all errors, omissions, or fraud. Any future growth will continue to add complexity to our organization and require effective coordination throughout our organization. Failure to manage any future growth effectively could result in increased costs, cause difficulty or delays in deploying new customers, reduce demand for our platform, cause
difficulties in introducing new features or other operational difficulties, and any of these difficulties would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our sales cycles can be long and unpredictable, and our sales efforts require considerable time and expense.
Our revenue recognition is difficult to predict because of the length and unpredictability of the sales cycle for our platform, particularly with respect to large organizations and government entities. Customers often view the subscription to our platform as a significant strategic decision and, as a result, frequently require considerable time to evaluate, test and qualify our platform prior to entering into or expanding a relationship with us. Large enterprises and government entities in particular often undertake a significant evaluation process that further lengthens our sales cycle.
Our direct sales team develops relationships with our customers, and works with our channel partners on account penetration, account coordination, sales and overall market development. We spend substantial time and resources on our sales efforts without any assurance that our efforts will produce a sale. Security solution purchases are frequently subject to budget constraints, multiple approvals and unanticipated administrative, processing and other delays. As a result, it is difficult to predict whether and when a sale will be completed. The failure of our efforts to secure sales after investing resources in a lengthy sales process would adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
The sales prices of our platform may decrease, or the mix of our sales may change, which may reduce our gross profits and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We have limited experience with respect to determining the optimal prices for our platform. As the market for endpoint security matures, or as new competitors introduce new products or services that are similar to or compete with ours, we may be unable to attract new customers at the same price or based on the same pricing model as we have used historically. Further, competition continues to increase in the market segments in which we participate, and we expect competition to further increase in the future, thereby leading to increased pricing pressures. Larger competitors with more diverse product and service offerings may reduce the price of products or services that compete with ours or may bundle them with other products and services. This could lead customers to demand greater price concessions or additional functionality at the same price levels. As a result, in the future we may be required to reduce our prices or provide more features without corresponding increases in price, which would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Because we recognize revenue from subscriptions to our platform over the term of the subscription, downturns or upturns in new business will not be immediately reflected in our operating results.
We generally recognize revenue from customers ratably over the term of their subscription, which is generally one to three years. As a result, a substantial portion of the revenue we report in each period is attributable to the recognition of deferred revenue relating to agreements that we entered into during previous periods. Consequently, any increase or decrease in new sales or renewals in any one period will not be immediately reflected in our revenue for that period. Any such change, however, would affect our revenue in future periods. Accordingly, the effect of downturns or upturns in new sales and potential changes in our rate of renewals will not be fully reflected in our operating results until future periods. We may also be unable to timely reduce our cost structure in line with a significant deterioration in sales or renewals that would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We provide service level commitments under some of our customer contracts. If we fail to meet these contractual commitments, we could be obligated to provide partial refunds or our customers could be entitled to terminate their contracts and our business would suffer.
Certain of our customer agreements contain service level commitments, which contain specifications regarding the availability of our platform and our support services. Failure of or disruption to our infrastructure could impact the performance of our platform and the availability of services to customers. If
we are unable to meet our stated service level commitments or if we suffer extended periods of poor performance or unavailability of our platform, we may be contractually obligated to provide affected customers with partial refunds or termination rights. To date, there has not been a material failure to meet our service level commitments, and we do not currently have any material liabilities accrued on our consolidated balance sheets for such commitments. Our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected if we suffer performance issues or downtime that exceeds the service level commitments under our agreements with our customers.
Our business is subject to the risks of warranty claims and product liability claims from real or perceived defects in our solutions or their misuse by our customers or third parties and indemnity provisions in various agreements potentially expose us to substantial liability for intellectual property infringement and other losses.
We may be subject to liability claims for damages related to errors or defects in our solutions. A material liability claim or other occurrence that harms our reputation or decreases market acceptance of our platform will harm our business and operating results. Although we generally have limitation of liability provisions in our terms and conditions of sale, they may not fully or effectively protect us from claims as a result of federal, state or local laws or ordinances, or unfavorable judicial decisions in the United States or other countries. The sale and support of our platform also entails the risk of product liability claims.
Additionally, we typically provide indemnification to customers for certain losses suffered or expenses incurred as a result of third-party claims arising from our infringement of a third party’s intellectual property. We also provide unlimited liability for certain breaches of confidentiality, as defined in our terms of service. We also provide limited liability in the event of certain breaches of our terms of service. Certain of these contractual provisions survive termination or expiration of the applicable agreement. We have not to date received any indemnification claims from third parties. However, as we continue to grow, the possibility of these claims against us will increase.
If our customers or other third parties we do business with make intellectual property rights or other indemnification claims against us, we will incur significant legal expenses and may have to pay damages, license fees and/or stop using technology found to be in violation of the third party’s rights. We may also have to seek a license for the technology. Such license may not be available on reasonable terms, if at all, and may significantly increase our operating expenses or may require us to restrict our business activities and limit our ability to deliver certain solutions or features. We may also be required to develop alternative non-infringing technology, which could require significant effort and expense and/or cause us to alter our platform, which could harm our business. Large indemnity obligations, whether for intellectual property or in certain limited circumstances, other claims, would harm our business, operating results and financial condition.
Additionally, our platform may be used by our customers and other third parties who obtain access to our solutions for purposes other than for which our platform was intended.
We maintain insurance to protect against certain claims associated with the use of our platform, but our insurance coverage may not adequately cover the claims asserted against us. In addition, even claims that ultimately are unsuccessful could result in our expenditure of funds in litigation, divert management’s time and other resources, and harm our business and reputation. We have offered some of our customers a limited warranty, subject to certain conditions. For example, in limited circumstances, we offer certain customers ransomware warranty in addition to their subscriptions, providing coverage in the form of a limited monetary payment, if they are affected by a ransomware attack (as specified in our ransomware warranty agreement). The ransomware warranty coverage provides that we will pay $1,000 per endpoint affected by a ransomware-based breach subject to the terms and limitations of the warranty, and is further capped at $1 million for every consecutive 12 months in which the customer subscribes to the solutions with respect to the affected endpoint. While we maintain insurance relating to our warranty, we cannot be certain that our insurance coverage will be adequate to cover such claims, that such insurance will continue to be available to us on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, or that any insurer will not deny coverage
as to any claim. Any failure or refusal of our insurance providers to provide the expected insurance benefits to us after we have paid the ransomware warranty claims would cause us to incur significant expense or cause us to cease offering this warranty which could damage our reputation, cause us to lose customers, expose us to liability claims by our customers, negatively impact our sales and marketing efforts, and have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition. Further, although the terms of the warranty do not allow those customers to use warranty claim payments to fund payments to persons on the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons or who are otherwise subject to U.S. sanctions, we cannot assure you that all of our customers will comply with our warranty terms or refrain from taking actions, in violation of our warranty and applicable law.
Risks Related to our People
We rely on our management team and other key employees and will need additional personnel to grow our business, and the loss of one or more key employees or our inability to hire, integrate, train, manage, retain, and motivate qualified personnel, including members of our board of directors, could harm our business.
Our future success is dependent, in part, on our ability to hire, integrate, train, manage, retain, and motivate the members of our management team and other key employees throughout our organization. The loss of key personnel, including key members of our management team or members of our board of directors, as well as certain of our key marketing, sales, finance, support, product development, human resources, or technology personnel, could disrupt our operations and have an adverse effect on our ability to grow our business. In particular, we are highly dependent on the services of Tomer Weingarten, our co-founder, Chairman of the Board of Directors, President, and Chief Executive Officer, who is critical to the development of our technology, platform, future vision, and strategic direction.
Competition for highly skilled personnel is intense, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Israel, where we have a substantial presence and need for highly skilled personnel, and we may not be successful in hiring or retaining qualified personnel to fulfill our current or future needs. More generally, the technology industry, and the cybersecurity industry more specifically, is also subject to substantial and continuous competition for engineers with high levels of experience in designing, developing and managing software and related services. We have, from time to time, experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining highly skilled employees with appropriate qualifications. For example, in recent years, recruiting, hiring and retaining employees with expertise in the cybersecurity industry has become increasingly difficult as the demand for cybersecurity professionals has increased as a result of the recent cybersecurity attacks on global corporations and governments. We may be required to provide more training to our personnel than we currently anticipate.
Restrictive immigration policies or legal or regulatory developments relating to immigration may also negatively affect our efforts to attract and hire new personnel as well as retain our existing personnel. Changes in U.S. immigration and work authorization laws and regulations can be significantly affected by political forces and levels of economic activity. Our business may be adversely affected if legislative or administrative changes to immigration or visa laws and regulations impair our hiring processes.
Moreover, many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we have. Our competitors also may be successful in recruiting and hiring members of our management team or other key employees, and it may be difficult for us to find suitable replacements on a timely basis, on competitive terms, or at all. We have in the past, and may in the future, be subject to allegations that employees we hire have been improperly solicited, or that they have divulged proprietary or other confidential information or that their former employers own such employees’ inventions or other work product, or that they have been hired in violation of non-compete provisions or non-solicitation provisions.
In addition, job candidates and existing employees often consider the value of the equity awards and other compensation they receive in connection with their employment. If the perceived value of our compensatory packages declines, it may adversely affect our ability to attract and retain highly skilled employees. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects would be severely harmed. Further, our competitors may be successful in recruiting and hiring members of our management team or other key employees, and it may be difficult for us to find suitable replacements on a timely basis, on competitive terms, or at all. Although we have entered into employment agreements with our key employees, these agreements are on an “at-will” basis, meaning they are able to terminate their employment with us at any time. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects would be severely harmed.
If we do not effectively hire, integrate, train, manage, and retain additional sales personnel, and expand our sales and marketing capabilities, we may be unable to increase our customer base and increase sales to our existing customers.
Our ability to increase our customer base and achieve broader market adoption of our platform will depend to a significant extent on our ability to continue to expand our sales and marketing operations. We have and plan to continue to dedicate significant resources to sales and marketing programs and to expand our sales and marketing capabilities to target additional potential customers, but there is no guarantee that we will be successful in attracting and maintaining additional customers. If we are unable to find efficient ways to deploy our sales and marketing investments or if our sales and marketing programs are not effective, our business and operating results would be adversely affected.
Furthermore, we plan to continue expanding our sales force and there is significant competition for sales personnel with the skills and technical knowledge that we require. Our ability to achieve revenue growth will depend, in part, on our success in hiring, integrating, training, managing, and retaining sufficient numbers of sales personnel to support our growth, particularly in international markets. New hires require significant training and may take extended time before they are productive. Our recent hires and planned hires may not become productive as quickly as we expect, or at all, and we may be unable to hire or retain sufficient numbers of qualified individuals in the markets where we do business or plan to do business. Moreover, our international expansion may be slow or unsuccessful if we are unable to retain qualified personnel with international experience, language skills and cultural competencies in the geographic markets in which we target.
If we are unable to hire, integrate, train, manage, and retain a sufficient number of effective sales personnel, or the sales personnel we hire are not successful in obtaining new customers or increasing sales to our existing customer base, our business, operating results and financial condition will be adversely affected.
Any inability to maintain a high-quality customer support organization could lead to a lack of customer satisfaction, which could hurt our customer relationships and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Once our platform is deployed within our customers’ computing environments, our customers rely on our technical support services to assist with service customization and optimization and to resolve certain issues relating to the implementation and maintenance of our platform and advanced services. If we do not effectively assist our customers in deploying our platform, succeed in helping our customers quickly resolve technical issues, or provide effective ongoing support, our ability to sell additional products and services as part of our platform to existing customers would be adversely affected and our reputation with potential customers could be damaged.
In addition, our sales process is highly dependent on our product and business reputation and on positive recommendations, referrals, and peer promotions from our existing customers. Any failure to maintain high-quality technical support, or a market perception that we do not maintain high-quality
support, could adversely affect our reputation, our ability to sell our services to existing and prospective customers, and our business, operating results and financial condition.
We believe that our corporate culture has contributed to our success, and if we cannot maintain this culture as we grow, we could lose the innovation, creativity, and teamwork fostered by our culture, and our business may be harmed.
We believe that our corporate culture has been, and will continue to be a key contributor to our success. If we do not continue to develop our corporate culture as we grow and evolve, it could harm our ability to foster the innovation, inclusion, creativity, and teamwork that we believe is important to support our growth. As we implement more complex organizational structures, we may find it increasingly difficult to maintain the beneficial aspects of our corporate culture, which could negatively impact our future success. We are also taking steps to develop a more inclusive and diverse workforce, however, there is no guarantee that we will be able to do so.
Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property
Our proprietary rights may be difficult to enforce, which could enable others to copy or use aspects of our platform without compensating us.
We rely primarily on patent, trademark, copyright and trade secrets laws, and confidentiality agreements and contractual provisions to protect our technology. Valid patents may not issue from our pending applications, and the claims eventually allowed on any patents may not be sufficiently broad to protect our technology or platform. Any issued patents may be challenged, invalidated or circumvented, and any rights granted under these patents may not actually provide adequate defensive protection or competitive advantages to us. Patent applications in the United States are typically not published until at least 18 months after filing, or, in some cases, not at all, and publications of discoveries in industry-related literature lag behind actual discoveries. We cannot be certain that we were the first to make the inventions claimed in our pending patent applications or that we were the first to file for patent protection. Additionally, the process of obtaining patent protection is expensive and time-consuming, and we may not be able to prosecute all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner. In addition, recent changes to the patent laws in the United States may bring into question the validity of certain software patents and may make it more difficult and costly to prosecute patent applications. Such changes may lead to uncertainties or increased costs and risks surrounding the prosecution, validity, ownership, enforcement, and defense of our issued patents and patent applications and other intellectual property, the outcome of third-party claims of infringement, misappropriation, or other violation of intellectual property brought against us and the actual or enhanced damages (including treble damages) that may be awarded in connection with any such current or future claims, and could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our platform or obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary. We generally enter into confidentiality or license agreements with our employees, consultants, vendors, and customers, and generally limit access to and distribution of our proprietary information. However, such agreements may not be enforceable in full or in part in all jurisdictions and any breach could negatively affect on our business and our remedy for such breach may be limited. The contractual provisions that we enter into may not prevent unauthorized use or disclosure of our proprietary technology or intellectual property rights and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of unauthorized use or disclosure of our proprietary technology or intellectual property rights. As such, we cannot guarantee that the steps taken by us will prevent misappropriation of our technology. Policing unauthorized use of our technology or platform is difficult. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries do not protect our proprietary rights to as great an extent as the laws of the United States, and many foreign countries do not enforce these laws as diligently as government agencies and private parties in the United States. For example, many foreign countries limit the enforceability of patents against certain third parties, including government agencies or government contractors. In these countries, patents may provide limited or no benefit. Effective trade secret protection
may also not be available in every country in which our products are available or where we have employees or independent contractors. The loss of trade secret protection could make it easier for third parties to compete with our products by copying functionality. In addition, any changes in, or unexpected interpretations of, the trade secret and employment laws in any country in which we operate may compromise our ability to enforce our trade secret and intellectual property rights. From time to time, legal action by us may be necessary to enforce our patents and other IP rights, to protect our trade secrets, to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others or to defend against claims of infringement or invalidity. Such litigation could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources and could negatively affect our business, operating results and financial condition. If we are unable to protect our proprietary rights (including aspects of our software and platform protected other than by patent rights), we will find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage to others who need not incur the additional expense, time and effort required to create our platform and other innovative products that have enabled us to be successful to date. Moreover, we may need to expend additional resources to defend our intellectual property rights in foreign countries, and our inability to do so could impair our business or adversely affect our international expansion.
Third parties have claimed and may claim in the future that our platform infringes their intellectual property rights and this may create liability for us or otherwise adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Third parties have, and may claim in the future, that our current or future products and services infringe their intellectual property rights, and such claims may result in legal claims against our channel partners, our alliance partners, our customers and us. These claims may damage our brand and reputation, harm our customer relationships, and create liability for us. We expect the number of such claims to increase as the number of products and services and the level of competition in our market grows, as the functionality of our platform overlaps with that of other products and services, and as the volume of issued software patents and patent applications continues to increase. We generally agree in our customer contracts to indemnify customers for certain expenses or liabilities they incur as a result of third-party intellectual property infringement claims associated with our platform. To the extent that any claim arises as a result of third-party technology we have licensed for use in our platform, we may be unable to recover from the appropriate third party any expenses or other liabilities that we incur.
Companies in the software and technology industries, including some of our current and potential competitors, own large numbers of patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets and frequently enter into litigation based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights. In addition, many of these companies have the capability to dedicate substantially greater resources to enforce their intellectual property rights and to defend claims that may be brought against them. Furthermore, patent holding companies, non-practicing entities, and other adverse patent owners that are not deterred by our existing intellectual property protections may seek to assert patent claims against us. From time to time, third parties, including certain of these leading companies, have invited us to license their patents and may, in the future, assert patent, copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights against us, our channel partners, our alliance partners, or our customers. We have received, and may in the future receive, notices that claim we have misappropriated, misused, or infringed other parties’ intellectual property rights, and, to the extent we gain greater market visibility, we face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims. Prior to publicly filing our registration statement in connection with our IPO, in May 2021, we received a letter from International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), alleging that we infringe on three U.S. patents held by IBM. To date, no litigation has been filed by IBM against us regarding the IBM patents. Based on our review of these patents, we believe we have meritorious defenses to IBM’s allegations, although there can be no assurance that IBM will refrain from suing us, or that we will be successful in defending against these allegations or reaching a business resolution that is satisfactory to us.
There may be third-party intellectual property rights, including issued or pending patents and trademarks, that cover significant aspects of our technologies or business methods and assets. We may also face exposure to third-party intellectual property infringement, misappropriation, or violation actions if we
engage software engineers or other personnel who were previously engaged by competitors or other third parties and those personnel inadvertently or deliberately incorporate proprietary technology of third parties into our products. In addition, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights or personnel. A loss of key personnel or their work product could hamper or prevent our ability to develop, market, and support potential products or enhancements, which could severely harm our business. Any intellectual property claims, with or without merit, could be very time-consuming, could be expensive to settle or litigate, and could divert our management’s attention and other resources. These claims could also subject us to significant liability for damages, potentially including treble damages if we are found to have willfully infringed patents or copyrights, and may require us to indemnify our customers for liabilities they incur as a result of such claims. These claims could also result in our having to stop using technology found to be in violation of a third party’s rights. We might be required to seek a license for the intellectual property, which may not be available on reasonable terms or at all. Even if a license were available, we could be required to pay significant royalties, which would increase our operating expenses. Alternatively, we could be required to develop alternative non-infringing technology, which could require significant time, effort, and expense, and may affect the performance or features of our platform. If we cannot license or develop alternative non-infringing substitutes for any infringing technology used in any aspect of our business, we would be forced to limit or stop sales of our platform and may be unable to compete effectively. Any of these results would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We license technology from third parties, and our inability to maintain those licenses could harm our business.
We currently incorporate, and will in the future incorporate, technology that we license from third parties, including software, into our solutions. Licensing technologies from third parties exposes us to increased risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement due to, among other things, our lower level of visibility into the development process with respect to such technology and the care taken to safeguard against infringement risks. We cannot be certain that our licensors do not or will not infringe on the intellectual property rights of third parties or that our licensors have or will have sufficient rights to the licensed intellectual property in all jurisdictions in which we may sell our platform. Some of our agreements with our licensors may be terminated by them for convenience, or otherwise provide for a limited term. If we are unable to continue to license technology because of intellectual property infringement claims brought by third parties against our licensors or against us, or if we are unable to continue our license agreements or enter into new licenses on commercially reasonable terms, our ability to develop and sell solutions and services containing or dependent on that technology would be limited, and our business could be harmed. Additionally, if we are unable to license technology from third parties, we may be forced to acquire or develop alternative technology, which we may be unable to do in a commercially feasible manner, or at all, and may require us to use alternative technology of lower quality or performance standards. This could limit or delay our ability to offer new or competitive solutions and increase our costs. As a result, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
Some of our technology incorporates “open source” software, which could negatively affect our ability to sell our platform and subject us to possible litigation.
Our platform contains third-party open source software components, and failure to comply with the terms of the underlying open source software licenses could restrict our ability to sell our products and subscriptions. The use and distribution of open source software may entail greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code and they can change the license terms on which they offer the open source software. Although we monitor our use of open source software in an effort both to comply with the terms of the applicable open source licenses and to avoid subjecting our products to conditions we do not intend, many of the risks associated with use of open source software cannot be eliminated and could negatively affect our business. In addition, the wide availability of source code used in our solutions could expose us to security vulnerabilities.
Some open source licenses contain requirements that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon the type of open source software we use. If we combine our proprietary software with open source software in a certain manner, we could, under certain open source licenses, be required to release the source code of our proprietary software to the public, including authorizing further modification and redistribution, or otherwise be limited in the licensing of our services, each of which could provide an advantage to our competitors or other entrants to the market, create security vulnerabilities in our solution, require us to re-engineer all or a portion of our platform, and reduce or eliminate the value of our services. This would allow our competitors to create similar products with lower development effort and time and ultimately could result in a loss of sales for us.
The terms of many open source licenses have not been interpreted by U.S. courts, and there is a risk that these licenses could be construed in ways that could impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to commercialize products and subscriptions incorporating such software. Moreover, we cannot assure you that our processes for controlling our use of open source software in our products and subscriptions will be effective. From time to time, we may face claims from third parties asserting ownership of, or demanding release of, the open source software or derivative works that we developed using such software (which could include our proprietary source code), or otherwise seeking to enforce the terms of the applicable open source license. These claims could result in litigation. Litigation could be costly for us to defend, have a negative effect on our operating results and financial condition, or require us to devote additional research and development resources to change our solution. Responding to any infringement or noncompliance claim by an open source vendor, regardless of its validity, discovering certain open source software code in our platform, or a finding that we have breached the terms of an open source software license, could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition, by, among other things:
•resulting in time-consuming and costly litigation;
•diverting management’s time and attention from developing our business;
•requiring us to pay monetary damages or enter into royalty and licensing agreements that we would not normally find acceptable;
•causing delays in the deployment of our platform or service offerings to our customers;
•requiring us to stop offering certain services or features of our platform;
•requiring us to redesign certain components of our platform using alternative non-infringing or non-open source technology, which could require significant effort and expense;
•requiring us to disclose our software source code and the detailed program commands for our software; and
•requiring us to satisfy indemnification obligations to our customers.
Risks Related to Legal and Regulatory Matters
We are subject to laws and regulations, including governmental export and import controls, sanctions and anti-corruption laws, that could impair our ability to compete in our markets and subject us to liability if we are not in full compliance with applicable laws.
We are subject to laws and regulations, including governmental export and import controls, that could subject us to liability or impair our ability to compete in our markets. Our platform and related technology is subject to U.S. export controls, including the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Export Administration Regulations (EAR), and we and our employees, representatives, contractors, agents, intermediaries, and other third parties are also subject to various economic and trade sanctions regulations administered by OFAC. We incorporate standard encryption algorithms into our platform, which, along with the underlying technology, may be exported outside of the U.S. only with the required export authorizations, including by
license, license exception or other appropriate government authorizations, which may require the filing of an encryption registration and classification request. We also offer certain customers a ransomware warranty in addition to their subscriptions, providing coverage in the form of a limited monetary payment if they are affected by a ransomware attack (as specified in our ransomware warranty agreement), and though the terms of the warranty do not allow those customers to use warranty claim payments to fund payments to persons on OFAC’s list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons or who are otherwise prohibited to receive such payments under U.S. sanctions, we cannot assure you that all of our customers will comply with our warranty terms or refrain from taking actions in violation of our warranty and applicable law. Furthermore, U.S. export control laws and economic sanctions prohibit the shipment of certain hardware and software and the provision of certain cloud-based solutions to certain countries, governments and persons targeted by U.S. sanctions and for certain end-uses. As an example, following Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States and other countries imposed economic sanctions and severe export control restrictions against Russia and Belarus, and the United States and other countries could impose wide sanctions and export restrictions and take other actions should the conflict further escalate. Any exports or sales of our software and services into Russia and Belarus as well as our ability to use developers in Russia and Belarus may be impacted by these restrictions. We also collect information about cyber threats from open sources, intermediaries and third parties that we make available to our customers in our threat industry publications. While we have implemented certain procedures to facilitate compliance with applicable laws and regulations in connection with the collection and distribution of this information, we cannot assure you that these procedures have been effective or that we, or third parties who we do not control, have complied with all laws or regulations in this regard. Failure by our employees, representatives, contractors, channel partners, agents, intermediaries, or other third parties to comply with applicable laws and regulations in the collection and distribution of this information also could have negative consequences to us, including reputational harm, government investigations, and penalties.
Although we take precautions to prevent our information collection practices and services from being provided in violation of such laws, our information collection practices and services may have been in the past, and could in the future be, provided in violation of such laws. If we or our employees, representatives, contractors, channel partners, agents, intermediaries, or other third parties fail to comply with these laws and regulations, we could be subject to civil or criminal penalties, including the possible loss of export privileges and fines. We may also be adversely affected through reputational harm, loss of access to certain markets or otherwise. Obtaining the necessary authorizations, including any required license, for a particular transaction may be time-consuming, is not guaranteed and may result in the delay or loss of sales opportunities.
Various countries regulate the import of certain encryption technology, including through import permit and license requirements, and have enacted laws that could limit our ability to distribute our platform or could limit our customers’ ability to implement our platform in those countries. Additionally, export restrictions recently imposed on Russia and Belarus specifically limit the export of encryption hardware, software and related source code and technology to these locations which could limit our ability to provide our software and services to these countries. Changes in our platform or changes in export and import regulations may create delays in the introduction of our platform into international markets, prevent our customers with international operations from deploying our platform globally or, in some cases, prevent the export or import of our platform to certain countries, governments or persons altogether. Any change in export or import regulations, economic sanctions or related legislation, shift in the enforcement or scope of existing regulations, or change in the countries, governments, persons or technologies targeted by such regulations, could result in decreased use of our platform by, or in our decreased ability to export or sell our platform to, existing or potential customers with international operations. Any decreased use of our platform or limitation on our ability to export or sell our platform would adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We are also subject to the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (FCPA), as amended, the United Kingdom Bribery Act 2010 (the Bribery Act), and other anti-corruption, sanctions, anti-bribery, anti-money laundering and similar laws in the United States and other countries in which we conduct activities. Anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws, which have been enforced aggressively and are interpreted broadly, prohibit companies and their employees, agents, intermediaries and other third parties from
promising, authorizing, making or offering improper payments or other benefits to government officials and others in the public sector. We leverage third parties, including intermediaries, agents and channel partners, to conduct our business in the United States and abroad, to sell subscriptions to our platform and to collect information about cyber threats. We and these third parties may have direct or indirect interactions with officials and employees of government agencies or state-owned or affiliated entities and we may be held liable for the corrupt or other illegal activities of these third-party business partners and intermediaries, our employees, representatives, contractors, channel partners, agents, intermediaries and other third parties, even if we do not explicitly authorize such activities. While we have policies and procedures to address compliance with FCPA, Bribery Act and other anti-corruption, sanctions, anti-bribery, anti-money laundering and similar laws, we cannot assure you that they will be effective, or that all of our employees, representatives, contractors, channel partners, agents, intermediaries or other third parties have not taken, or will not take actions, in violation of our policies and applicable law, for which we may be ultimately held responsible. As we increase our international sales and business, including our business with government organizations, our risks under these laws may increase. Noncompliance with these laws could subject us to investigations, severe criminal or civil sanctions, settlements, prosecution, loss of export privileges, suspension or debarment from U.S. government contracts, other enforcement actions, disgorgement of profits, significant fines, damages, other civil and criminal penalties or injunctions, whistleblower complaints, adverse media coverage and other consequences. Any investigations, actions or sanctions could harm our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition.
If we fail to adequately protect personal information or other information we collect, process, share or maintain under applicable laws, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We receive, store, and process some personal information from our employees, customers, and the employees of our customers, and our end users. This personal information is hosted by third party service providers. A wide variety of state, national, and international laws, as well as regulations and industry standards apply to the collection, use, retention, protection, disclosure, transfer and other processing of personal information and other information, the scope of which are changing, subject to differing interpretations, and may be inconsistent across countries or conflict with other rules. Data protection and privacy-related laws and regulations are evolving and may result in ever increasing regulatory and public scrutiny and escalating levels of enforcement and sanctions. Failure to comply with laws, regulations and industry standards regarding personal information or other information could adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
Complying with these various laws and regulations could cause us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices, systems, and compliance procedures in a manner adverse to our business.
In the United States, there are numerous federal and state consumer, privacy and data security laws and regulations governing the collection, use, disclosure, and protection of personal information, including security breach notification laws and consumer protection laws. Each of these laws is subject to varying interpretations and constantly evolving. Notably, but not necessarily limited to, we may be subject to:
•Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM) and similar state consumer protection laws regarding the use telephones and text messaging for marketing purposes.
•Section 5(a) of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act for violating consumers’ privacy rights or failing to take appropriate steps to keep consumers’ personal information secure, resulting in a finding of an unfair act or practice.
•The CCPA, effective since January 1, 2020, which created new data privacy obligations for covered companies and provided new privacy rights to California residents, including the right to opt out of certain disclosures of their information and receive detailed information about how their personal information is used. The CCPA provides for civil penalties for violations, as well as a private right of action for data breaches that is expected to increase data breach litigation. A ballot initiative called the California Privacy Rights Act, or CPRA, was passed in November 2020 and will take effect in January 2023 (with a look back to January 2022). The CPRA will significantly modify the CCPA, including by expanding consumers’ rights with respect to certain sensitive personal data. The CPRA also creates a new state agency that will be vested with authority to implement and enforce the CCPA and the CPRA. Potential uncertainty surrounding the CCPA and CPRA may increase our compliance costs and potential liability, particularly in the event of a data breach, and could have a material adverse effect on our business.
•Other states have followed California: Virginia enacted the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act that will also be effective January 1, 2023; Colorado recently enacted its Colorado Privacy Act, which will be effective July 1, 2023; and as the year 2022 began, fourteen states had pending consumer privacy legislation under review, which if enacted would add additional costs and expense of resources to maintain compliance.
In certain circumstances, we may be subject to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (established in 2018 and implemented by countries in the EEA) and the U.K. General Data Protection Regulation and U.K. Data Protection Act 2018 (U.K. GDPR), which respectively govern the collection, use, disclosure, transfer or other processing of personal data of natural persons, and it applies extra-territorially and imposes onerous requirements on controllers and processors of personal data, including, for example: (i) accountability and transparency requirements, and enhanced requirements for obtaining valid consent; (ii) obligations to consider data protection as any new products or services are developed and to limit the amount of personal data processed; (iii) obligations to comply with data protection rights of data subjects; and (iv) reporting of personal data breaches to the supervisory authority without undue delay (and no later than 72 hours).
Companies that must comply with the GDPR face increased compliance obligations and risk, including more robust regulatory enforcement of data protection requirements and potential fines for noncompliance of up to €20 million or 4 percent of the annual global revenues of the noncompliant company, whichever is greater. Additionally, following the withdrawal by the United Kingdom (U.K.) from the European Union and the EEA, companies must comply with both the GDPR and the U.K. GDPR as incorporated into United Kingdom national law, the latter regime having the ability to separately fine up to the greater of £17.5 million or 4 percent of global turnover. In addition to the foregoing, a breach of the GDPR or U.K. GDPR could result in regulatory investigations, reputational damage, orders to cease or change our processing of our data, enforcement notices, and/or assessment notices (for a compulsory audit). We may also face civil claims including representative actions and other class action type litigation (where individuals have suffered harm), potentially amounting to significant compensation or damages liabilities, as well as associated costs, diversion of internal resources, and reputational harm.
The GDPR and U.K. GDPR requires, among other things, that personal information only be transferred outside of the EEA, or the U.K., respectively to jurisdictions that have been deemed adequate (also known as “third countries,” which at present time includes the United States) by the European Commission or by the U.K. data protection regulator, respectively. Accordingly, personal information may not be transferred to those jurisdictions that have not been deemed adequate, unless steps are taken to legitimize those data transfers. Switzerland follows similar legal practices. Previously, we relied on the E.U.-U.S. Privacy Shield framework to provide a mechanism for the transfer of data from E.U. Member States to the United States, but this was invalidated by the European Court of Justice, or the CJEU, on July 16, 2020, on the grounds that the Privacy Shield failed to offer adequate protections to E.U. personal information transferred to the United States We previously relied on our own, as well as our vendors’, Privacy Shield certification for the purposes of transferring personal data from the EEA to the United States in compliance with the GDPR/U.K. GDPR’s data export conditions, which are no longer allowed.
One such alternative to the Privacy Shield is the use of Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) a standard form of contract approved by the European Commission as an adequate personal data transfer mechanism, may not be alone sufficient to protect data transferred to the United States or other Third Countries under certain circumstances without making a case-by-case basis assessment of the legal regime applicable in the destination country according to the CJEU. At this time though, we use the versions of the European Commission SCCs released under the Implementing Decision in June 2021. Under the Implementing Decision, data exporters and data importers have until December 27, 2022 to update any existing agreements, or any new agreements executed before September 27, 2021 that rely on SCCs as the data transfer mechanism by replacing the old SCCs with new ones. We have already commenced this process by asking each of our affected customers to execute the new SCCs. To comply with the Implementing Decision and the new SCCs, we implemented additional safeguards to further enhance the security of data transferred out of the EEA, which could increase our compliance costs, expose us to further regulatory scrutiny and liability, and adversely affect our business. On June 28, 2021, the European Commission issued an adequacy decision for personal information transfers from the EEA to the U.K., with a sunset clause of four years, meaning that the European Commission will review and renew only if the European Commission considers that the U.K. continues to ensure an adequate level of data protection. Notably, the European Commission reserved a right to intervene at any time during the four-year adequacy period if the U.K. deviates from the level of protection then in place. If this adequacy decision is reversed by the European Commission, we would have to implement protection measures such as the SCCs for data transfers between the E.U. and the U.K. or find alternative solutions for the complaint transfer of personal data from the E.U. into the U.K.
As supervisory authorities continue to issue further guidance on personal information transfers (including regarding data export and circumstances in which we cannot use the SCCs), we could suffer additional costs, complaints, or regulatory investigations or fines. If we are otherwise unable to transfer personal data between and among countries and regions in which we operate, it could affect the manner in which we provide our services, adversely affecting our financial results, and possibly making it necessary to establish systems in the EEA, Switzerland, and the U.K. to maintain personal data originating from those jurisdictions that adds expenses and may create distractions from our other business pursuits. Loss, retention or misuse of certain information and alleged violations of laws and regulations relating to privacy and data security, and any relevant claims, may expose us to potential liability and may require us to expend significant resources on data security and in responding to and defending such allegations and claims.
We are also subject to evolving E.U. and U.K. privacy laws on cookies and e-marketing. In the E.U. and the U.K., informed consent is required for the placement of a cookie or similar technologies on a user’s device and for direct electronic marketing. The GDPR also imposes conditions on obtaining valid consent, such as a prohibition on pre-checked consents and a requirement to ensure separate consents are sought for each type of cookie or similar technology. While we anticipate the development of a ePrivacy Regulation to govern cookies and e-marketing, recent European court decisions and regulators’ guidance are driving increased attention to cookies and tracking technologies. If regulators start to enforce the strict approach in recent guidance, this could lead to substantial costs, require significant systems changes, limit the effectiveness of our marketing activities, divert the attention of our technology personnel, adversely affect our margins, increase costs and subject us to additional liabilities. Regulation of cookies and similar technologies, and any decline of cookies or similar online tracking technologies as a means to identify and potentially target users, may lead to broader restrictions and impairments on our marketing and personalization activities and may negatively impact our efforts to understand users. Similar concerns may happen under the new CPRA regime in California.
Additionally, by expanding into the E.U. and U.K., we may also trigger Article 3(2) of the GDPR/U.K. GDPR directly as we may be considered to be monitoring data subjects. To the extent we process personal data on behalf of our customers for the provision of services, we have, and may in the future, also be required to enter into data processing agreements which comply with Article 28 of the GDPR/U.K. GDPR.
We depend on a number of third parties in relation to the operation of our business, a number of which process personal data on our behalf or as our sub-processor. To the extent required by applicable law, we attempt to mitigate the associated risks of using third parties by performing security assessments and detailed due diligence, entering into contractual arrangements to ensure that providers only process personal data according to our instructions or comparable instructions to the instructions of our customer (as applicable), and that they have sufficient technical and organizational security measures in place. There is no assurance that these contractual measures and our own privacy and security-related safeguards will protect us from the risks associated with the third-party processing, storage and transmission of such information. Any violation of data or security laws by our third-party processors could have a material adverse effect on our business and result in the fines and penalties under the GDPR and the U.K. GDPR outlined above.
Broader data processing regulations affecting our business, the cybersecurity industry may face direct regulation. In recent years, some regulators have proposed or introduced cybersecurity licensing requirements or certification regimes for specific sectors, such as critical infrastructure. These may impose new requirements on us or our current or prospective customer including, but not limited to, data processing locations, breach notification, and security standards. Such requirements may cause us to incur significant organizational costs and increase barriers of entry into new markets. New worldwide data protection laws, including the U.S. and European jurisdictions described above, may lead to ever changing definitions of personal information and other sensitive information which may also limit or inhibit our ability to operate or expand our business, including limiting strategic partnerships that may involve the sharing of data. Notably some foreign jurisdictions require that certain types of data be retained on servers within these respective jurisdictions. Our failure to comply with applicable laws, directives, and regulations may result in enforcement action against us, including fines, and damage to our reputation, any of which may have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.
Any failure or perceived failure by us, even if unfounded, to comply with applicable privacy and data security laws and regulations, our privacy policies, or our privacy-related obligations to users or other third parties, or any compromise of security that results in the unauthorized release or transfer of personal information or other customer data, may result in governmental enforcement actions, litigation, or public statements against us by consumer advocacy groups or others and could cause our users to lose trust in us, which would have an adverse effect on our reputation and business. For example, in 2017, we reached a consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to resolve an investigation relating to certain disclosures in our privacy policy. The consent agreement requires us, among other things, to provide information about our compliance with the FTC order and about representations made in our marketing materials. To date, we remain fully complaint with the FTC, though we may be subject to future investigations and legal proceedings by the FTC or other regulators. A such, it is possible that a regulatory inquiry might result in changes to our policies or business practices. Violation of existing or future regulatory orders or consent decrees could subject us to substantial monetary fines and other penalties that could negatively affect our operating results and financial condition. In addition, it is possible that future orders issued by, or enforcement actions initiated by, regulatory authorities could cause us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices in a manner materially adverse to our business.
Any significant change to applicable laws, regulations or industry practices regarding the use or disclosure of our users’ data, or regarding the manner in which the express or implied consent of users for the use and disclosure of such data is obtained – or in how these applicable laws, regulations or industry practices are interpreted and enforced by state, federal and international privacy regulators – could require us to modify our services and features, possibly in a material manner, may subject us to regulatory enforcement actions and fines, and may limit our ability to develop new services and features that make use of the data that our users voluntarily share with us.
We may become involved in litigation that may adversely affect us.
From time to time, we have been subject to claims, suits and other proceedings. For example, we are currently the subject of litigation with Cylance, Inc. For additional information regarding this litigation, see the section titled “Part I—Legal Proceedings.” Regardless of the outcome, legal proceedings can have an adverse impact on us because of legal costs and diversion of management attention and resources, and could cause us to incur significant expenses or liability, adversely affect our brand recognition or require us to change our business practices. The expense of litigation and the timing of this expense from period to period are difficult to estimate, subject to change and could adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition. It is possible that a resolution of one or more such proceedings could result in substantial damages, settlement costs, fines and penalties that would adversely affect our business, consolidated financial condition, operating results or cash flows in a particular period. These proceedings could also result in reputational harm, sanctions, consent decrees or orders requiring a change in our business practices. Because of the potential risks, expenses and uncertainties of litigation, we may, from time to time, settle disputes, even where we have meritorious claims or defenses, by agreeing to settlement agreements. Because litigation is inherently unpredictable, we cannot assure you that the results of any of these actions will not have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition, and prospects. Any of these consequences could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Risks Related to Financial and Accounting Matters
The requirements of being a public company, including maintaining adequate internal control over our financial and management systems, may strain our resources, divert management’s attention, and affect our ability to attract and retain executive management and qualified board members.
As a public company we incur significant legal, accounting, and other expenses. We are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the rules and regulations of the applicable listing standards of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). We expect that the requirements of these rules and regulations will continue to increase our legal, accounting, and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time-consuming, and costly, and place significant strain on our personnel, systems, and resources.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. We are continuing to develop and refine our disclosure controls, internal control over financial reporting and other procedures that are designed to ensure information required to be disclosed by us in our financial statements and in the reports that we will file with the SEC is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms, and information required to be disclosed in reports under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to our principal executive and financial officers.
Our current controls and any new controls we develop may become inadequate because of changes in conditions in our business. Additionally, to the extent we acquire other businesses, the acquired companies may not have a sufficiently robust system of internal controls and we may uncover new deficiencies. Further, weaknesses in our internal controls may be discovered in the future. Any failure to develop or maintain effective controls, or any difficulties encountered in their implementation or improvement, could harm our operating results, may result in a restatement of our financial statements for prior periods, cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations, and could adversely affect the results of periodic management evaluations and annual independent registered public accounting firm attestation reports regarding the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting that we are required to include in the periodic reports we will file with the SEC. Ineffective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting could also cause investors to lose confidence in our reported financial and other information, which would likely have a negative effect on the market price of our Class A common stock. As a result of becoming a public company, our management is required, pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, to certify financial and other information in our quarterly and annual reports and
provide an annual report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting commencing with our second Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Being a public company, and particularly after we are no longer an “emerging growth company,” requires significant resources and management oversight. As a result, management’s attention may be diverted from other business concerns, which could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We incur significant costs and management resources as a result of operating as a public company.
As a public company, we incur significant legal, accounting, compliance and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company and these expenses will increase even more after we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” Our management and other personnel devote a substantial amount of time and incur significant expense in connection with compliance initiatives. As a public company, we bear all of the internal and external costs of preparing and distributing periodic public reports in compliance with our obligations under the securities laws.
In addition, regulations and standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the related rules and regulations implemented by the SEC and the NYSE have increased legal and financial compliance costs and will make some compliance activities more time-consuming. We have invested and intend to continue to invest resources to comply with evolving laws, regulations and standards, and this investment has resulted in and will continue to result in increased general and administrative expenses and may divert management’s time and attention from our other business activities. If our efforts to comply with new laws, regulations and standards differ from the activities intended by regulatory or governing bodies due to ambiguities related to practice, regulatory authorities may initiate legal proceedings against us, and our business may be harmed. We have incurred significant costs with respect to our directors’ and officers’ insurance coverage. In the future, it may be more expensive or more difficult for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance, and we may be required to accept reduced coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain coverage. These factors would also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified members of our board of directors, particularly to serve on our audit committee and compensation committee, and qualified executive officers.
We could be subject to additional tax liabilities and United States federal income tax reform could adversely affect us.
We are subject to U.S. federal, state, local and sales taxes in the United States and foreign income taxes, withholding taxes and transaction taxes in numerous foreign jurisdictions. Significant judgment is required in evaluating our tax positions and our worldwide provision for income taxes. During the ordinary course of business, there are many activities and transactions for which the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. In addition, our future income tax obligations could be adversely affected by changes in, or interpretations of, tax laws in the United States or in other jurisdictions in which we operate.
For example, the United States tax law legislation commonly referred to as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the Tax Act) (as modified by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, Economic Security Act, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the American Rescue Plan Act), significantly reformed the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (or the Internal Revenue Code), reducing U.S. federal tax rates, making sweeping changes to rules governing international business operations, and imposing significant additional limitations on tax benefits, including the deductibility of interest and the use of net operating loss carryforwards. Further changes to U.S. tax laws, including limitations on the ability of taxpayers to claim and utilize foreign tax credits, as well as changes to U.S. tax laws that may be enacted in the future, could impact the tax treatment of our foreign earnings and adversely affect our operating results and financial condition.
Our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be limited.
As of January 31, 2022, we had aggregate U.S. federal and state net operating loss carryforwards of $436.8 million and $268.9 million, respectively, which may be available to offset future taxable income for U.S. income tax purposes. If not utilized, the federal net operating loss carryforwards will begin to expire in 2031, and the state net operating loss carryforwards will begin to expire in 2023. In addition, we had federal research and development credit carryforwards of $1.1 million, which will begin to expire in 2037, and state research and development credit carryforwards of $1.1 million, which do not expire. We also had foreign net operating loss carryforwards of $281.9 million, which do not expire. Realization of these net operating loss and research and development credit carryforwards depends on future income, and there is a risk that certain of our existing carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities, which could adversely affect our operating results and financial condition.
In addition, under Sections 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code, if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” generally defined as a greater than 50% change (by value) in ownership by “5 percent shareholders” over a rolling three-year period, the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryovers and other pre-change tax attributes, such as research and development credits, to offset its post-change income or taxes may be limited. Similar rules apply under U.S. state tax laws. We have, and may in the future, experience ownership changes as a result of shifts in our stock ownership. As a result, if we earn net taxable income, our ability to use our pre-change U.S. net operating loss carryforwards to offset U.S. federal taxable income may be subject to limitations, which could potentially result in increased future tax liability to us.
We could be required to collect additional sales, use, value added, digital services, or other similar taxes or be subject to other liabilities that may increase the costs our customers would have to pay for our solutions and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We collect sales, use, value added, digital services, and other similar taxes in a number of jurisdictions. One or more U.S. states or countries may seek to impose incremental or new sales, use, value added, digital services, or other tax collection obligations on us. Further, an increasing number of U.S. states have considered or adopted laws that attempt to impose tax collection obligations on out-of-state companies. Additionally, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. et al, or Wayfair, that online sellers can be required to collect sales and use tax despite not having a physical presence in the state of the customer. In response to Wayfair, or otherwise, U.S. states or local governments may adopt, or begin to enforce, laws requiring us to calculate, collect, and remit taxes on sales in their jurisdictions. A successful assertion by one or more U.S. states requiring us to collect taxes where we presently do not do so, or to collect more taxes in a jurisdiction in which we currently do collect some taxes, could result in substantial liabilities, including taxes on past sales, as well as interest and penalties. Furthermore, certain jurisdictions, such as the U.K. and France, have recently introduced a digital services tax, which is generally a tax on gross revenue generated from users or customers located in in those jurisdictions, and other jurisdictions have enacted or are considering enacting similar laws. A successful assertion by a U.S. state or local government, or other country or jurisdiction that we should have been or should be collecting additional sales, use, value added, digital services or other similar taxes could, among other things, result in substantial tax payments, create significant administrative burdens for us, discourage potential customers from subscribing to our platform due to the incremental cost of any such sales or other related taxes, or otherwise harm our business.
Our corporate structure and intercompany arrangements are subject to the tax laws of various jurisdictions, and we could be obligated to pay additional taxes, which would harm our operating results and financial condition.
We are expanding our international operations and staff to support our business in international markets. We generally conduct our international operations through wholly-owned subsidiaries and are or may be required to report our taxable income in various jurisdictions worldwide based upon our business operations in those jurisdictions. Our intercompany relationships and intercompany transactions are subject
to complex transfer pricing rules administered by taxing authorities in various jurisdictions in which we operate with potentially divergent tax laws. The amount of taxes we pay in different jurisdictions will depend on the application of the tax laws of the various jurisdictions, including the United States, to our intercompany transactions, international business activities, changes in tax rates, new or revised tax laws or interpretations of existing tax laws and policies by taxing authorities and courts in various jurisdictions, and our ability to operate our business in a manner consistent with our corporate structure and intercompany arrangements.
It is not uncommon for tax authorities in different countries to have conflicting views, for instance, with respect to, among other things, the manner in which the arm’s length standard is applied for transfer pricing purposes, the transfer pricing and charges for intercompany services and other intercompany transactions, or with respect to the valuation of our intellectual property and the manner in which our intellectual property is utilized within our group. If taxing authorities in any of the jurisdictions in which we conduct our international operations were to successfully challenge our transfer pricing, we could be required to reallocate part or all of our income to reflect transfer pricing adjustments, which could result in an increased tax liability to us. In such circumstances, if the country from where the income was reallocated did not agree to the reallocation, we could become subject to tax on the same income in both countries, resulting in double taxation. Furthermore, the relevant taxing authorities may disagree with our determinations as to the income and expenses attributable to specific jurisdictions. If such a disagreement were to occur, and our position was not sustained, we could be required to pay additional taxes, interest and penalties, which could result in one-time tax charges, higher effective tax rates, reduced cash flows and lower overall profitability of our operations.
We are subject to federal, state and local income, sales and other taxes in the United States and income, withholding, transaction and other taxes in numerous foreign jurisdictions. Significant judgment is required in evaluating our tax positions and our worldwide provision for income taxes. During the ordinary course of business, there are many activities and transactions for which the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. In addition, our tax obligations and effective tax rates could be adversely affected by changes in the relevant tax, accounting and other laws, regulations, principles and interpretations, including those relating to income tax nexus, by recognizing tax losses or lower than anticipated earnings in jurisdictions where we have lower statutory rates and higher than anticipated earnings in jurisdictions where we have higher statutory rates, by changes in foreign currency exchange rates, or by changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities. We may be audited in various jurisdictions, and such jurisdictions including in jurisdictions in which we are not currently filing, may assess new or additional taxes, sales taxes and value added taxes against us. Although we believe our tax estimates are reasonable, the final determination of any tax audits or litigation could be materially different from our historical tax provisions and accruals, which could have an adverse effect on our operating results or cash flows in the period or periods for which a determination is made.
In addition, the OECD has published proposals covering a number of issues, including country-by-country reporting, permanent establishment rules, transfer pricing rules, tax treaties and taxation of the digital economy. A significant majority of countries in the OECD’s Inclusive Framework have agreed in principle to a proposed solution to address the tax challenges arising from the digitalization of the economy. Future tax reform resulting from these developments may result in changes to long-standing tax principles, which could adversely affect our effective tax rate or result in higher cash tax liabilities. The OECD’s proposed solution envisages new international tax rules and the removal of all Digital Services Taxes (DST). Notwithstanding this, some countries, in the E.U. and beyond, continue to operate a DST regime to capture tax revenue on digital services more immediately. Such laws may increase our tax obligations in those countries or change the manner in which we operate our business.
We are an “emerging growth company” and the reduced disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies may make our Class A common stock less attractive to investors.
We are an “emerging growth company” as defined in the JOBS Act. We will remain an emerging growth company until the earliest of (i) the last day of the fiscal year in which we have total gross revenue
of $1.07 billion or more, (ii) the last day of the fiscal year following the fifth anniversary of the date of the completion of our IPO, (iii) the date on which we have issued more than $1.0 billion in nonconvertible debt during the previous three years, and (vi) the date on which we are deemed to be a “large accelerated filer,” as defined in Rule 12b-2 under the Exchange Act. We could be deemed a large accelerated filer as earlier as January 31, 2023.
For as long as we continue to be an emerging growth company, we may take advantage of exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not emerging growth companies, including (i) not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, (ii) reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and (iii) exemptions from the requirements of holding nonbinding advisory stockholder votes on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not approved previously.
We currently intend to take advantage of the available exemptions described above.
Furthermore, under the JOBS Act, emerging growth companies may delay adopting new or revised accounting standards until such time as those standards become applicable to private companies. To date, we have not elected to take advantage of the benefits of this extended transition period for accounting standards. If we elect to delay adopting new or revised accounting standards, while we are still an “emerging growth company,” we will have to disclose the date on which adoption is required for non-emerging growth companies and the date on which we will adopt the recently issued accounting standard. We cannot predict if investors will find our Class A common stock less attractive because we may rely on certain exemptions available to emerging growth companies. If some investors find our Class A common stock less attractive as a result, our stock price may be more volatile.
If our estimates or judgments relating to our critical accounting policies prove to be incorrect or financial reporting standards or interpretations change, our operating results could be adversely affected.
The preparation of financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in our consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, as discussed in the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” The results of these estimates form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets, liabilities and equity, and the amount of revenue and expenses that are not readily apparent from other sources. Significant assumptions and estimates used in preparing our consolidated financial statements include but are not limited to those related to the valuation of our common stock prior to our IPO in June 2021, stock-based compensation, the period of benefit for deferred contract acquisition costs, standalone selling prices for each performance obligation, useful lives of long-lived assets, the incremental borrowing rate used for operating lease liabilities, and accounting for income taxes. Additionally, as a result of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, many of management’s estimates and assumptions require increased judgment and carry a higher degree of variability and volatility. Our operating results may be adversely affected if our assumptions change or if actual circumstances differ from those in our assumptions, which could cause our operating results to fall below the expectations of industry or financial analysts and investors, resulting in a potential decline in the market price of our Class A common stock.
Additionally, we regularly monitor our compliance with applicable financial reporting standards and review new pronouncements and drafts thereof that are relevant to us. As a result of new standards, changes to existing standards and changes in their interpretation, we might be required to change our accounting policies, alter our operational policies and implement new or enhance existing systems so that they reflect new or amended financial reporting standards, or we may be required to restate our published financial statements. Such changes to existing standards or changes in their interpretation may have an adverse effect
on our reputation, business, financial condition and profit, or cause an adverse deviation from our revenue and operating profit target, which may adversely affect our financial results.
We are exposed to fluctuations in currency exchange rates, which could negatively affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
Our sales contracts are denominated in U.S. dollars, and therefore our revenue is not subject to foreign currency risk. However, strengthening of the U.S. dollar increases the real cost of our platform to our customers outside of the United States, which could lead to delays in the purchase of our platform and the lengthening of our sales cycle. If the U.S. dollar continues to strengthen, this could adversely affect our operating results and financial condition. In addition, increased international sales in the future, including through continued international expansion, our channel partners and other partnerships, could result in foreign currency denominated sales, which would increase our foreign currency risk.
Our operating expenses incurred outside the U.S. and denominated in foreign currencies are increasing and are subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates. These expenses are denominated in foreign currencies and are subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates. We do not currently hedge against the risks associated with currency fluctuations but may do so, or use other derivative instruments, in the future.
We may require additional capital to fund our business and support our growth, and any inability to generate or obtain such capital may adversely affect our operating results and financial condition.
In order to support our growth and respond to business challenges, such as developing new features or enhancements to our platform to stay competitive, acquiring new technologies, and improving our infrastructure, we have made significant financial investments in our business and we intend to continue to make such investments. As a result, we may need to engage in additional equity or debt financings to provide the funds required for these investments and other business endeavors. If we raise additional funds through equity or convertible debt issuances, our existing stockholders may suffer significant dilution and these securities could have rights, preferences, and privileges that are superior to those of holders of our Class A common stock. We expect that our existing cash and cash equivalents will be sufficient to meet our anticipated cash needs for working capital and capital expenditures for at least the next 12 months. If we obtain additional funds through debt financing, we may not be able to obtain such financing on terms favorable to us. Such terms may involve restrictive covenants making it difficult to engage in capital raising activities and pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions. The trading prices of technology companies have been highly volatile as a result of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine, and market downturn, which may reduce our ability to access capital on favorable terms or at all. In addition, a recession, depression, or other sustained adverse market event could adversely affect our business and the value of our Class A common stock. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it, our ability to continue to support our business growth and to respond to business challenges could be significantly impaired and our business may be adversely affected, requiring us to delay, reduce, or eliminate some or all of our operations.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Class A Common Stock
The market price of our Class A common stock may be volatile, and you could lose all or part of your investment.
Our Class A common stock price is likely to continue to be volatile and could be subject to wide fluctuations. The market price of our Class A common stock depends on a number of factors, including those described in this “Risk Factors” section, many of which are beyond our control and may not be related to our operating performance. These fluctuations could cause you to lose all or part of your investment in our Class A common stock. Factors that could cause fluctuations in the market price of our Class A common stock include the following:
•actual or anticipated changes or fluctuations in our operating results;
•the financial projections we may provide to the public, any changes in these projections or our failure to meet these projections;
•announcements by us or our competitors of new products or new or terminated significant contracts, commercial relationships, acquisitions or capital commitments;
•rumors and market speculation involving us or other companies in our industry;
•the overall performance of the stock market or technology companies;
•the number of shares of our Class A common stock publicly owned and available for trading;
•failure of industry or financial analysts to maintain coverage of us, changes in financial estimates by any analysts who follow our company, or our failure to meet these estimates or the expectations of investors;
•litigation involving us, our industry or both, or investigations by regulators into our operations or those of our competitors;
•developments or disputes concerning our intellectual property rights or our solutions, or third-party proprietary rights;
•new laws or regulations or new interpretations of existing laws or regulations applicable to our business;
•any major changes in our management or our board of directors;
•interest rate changes or fluctuations; and
•other events or factors, including those resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, war, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, armed conflict, incidents of terrorism or responses to these events.
In addition, the stock market in general, and the market for technology companies in particular, has experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. Broad market and industry factors may seriously affect the market price of our Class A common stock, regardless of our actual operating performance. In addition, in the past, following periods of volatility in the overall market and the market prices of a particular company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against that company. Securities litigation, if instituted against us, could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention and resources from our business. This could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Sales of substantial amounts of our Class A common stock in the public markets, or the perception that they might occur, could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.
Sales of a substantial number of shares of our Class A common stock into the public market, including shares of Class A common stock held by our existing stockholders that have been converted from shares of Class B common stock, and particularly sales by our directors, executive officers, and principal stockholders, or the perception that these sales might occur, could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.
In addition, pursuant to our amended and restated investors’ rights agreement, dated October 28, 2020, certain stockholders have the right, subject to certain conditions, to require us to file a registration statement for the public resale of such capital stock or to include such shares in registration statements that we may file for us or other stockholders. Any registration statement we file to register additional shares, whether as a result of registration rights or otherwise, could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline or be volatile.
We may also issue our shares of our capital stock or securities convertible into shares of our capital stock from time to time in connection with a financing, an acquisition, an investment, or otherwise. Any such issuance could result in substantial dilution to our existing stockholders and cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.
The dual class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting control with those stockholders who held our capital stock prior to the completion of our IPO, including our directors, executive officers, and beneficial owners of 5% or greater of our outstanding capital stock who hold in the aggregate approximately 89% of the voting power of our capital stock as of January 31, 2022, which will limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters, including the election of directors and the approval of any change of control transaction.
Our Class B common stock has 20 votes per share, and our Class A common stock has one vote per share. As of January 31, 2022, the holders of our outstanding Class B common stock hold approximately 93% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, with our directors, executive officers, and pre-IPO holders of more than 5% of our common stock, and their respective affiliates, holding in the aggregate approximately 89% of the voting power of our capital stock as of January 31, 2022. Because of the twenty-to-one voting ratio between our Class B and Class A common stock, the holders of our Class B common stock collectively are expected to continue to control a majority of the combined voting power of our common stock and therefore will be able to control all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval until the earlier of (i) the date specified by a vote of the holders of 66 2/3% of the then outstanding shares of Class B common stock, (ii) seven years from the date of our Final Prospectus, or June 29, 2028, (iii) the first date following the completion of our IPO on which the number of shares of outstanding Class B common stock (including shares of Class B common stock subject to outstanding stock options) held by Tomer Weingarten, including certain permitted entities that Mr. Weingarten controls, is less than 25% of the number of shares of outstanding Class B common stock (including shares of Class B common stock subject to outstanding stock options) that Mr. Weingarten originally held as of the date of our Final Prospectus, (iv) the date fixed by our board of directors, following the first date following the completion of our IPO when Mr. Weingarten is no longer providing services to us as an officer, employee, consultant or member of our board of directors, (v) the date fixed by our board of directors following the date on which, if applicable, Mr. Weingarten is terminated for cause, as defined in our restated certificate of incorporation, and (vi) the date that is 12 months after the death or disability, as defined in our restated certificate of incorporation, of Mr. Weingarten. This concentrated control will limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters for the foreseeable future, including the election of directors, amendments of our organizational documents, and any merger, consolidation, sale of all or substantially all of our assets, or other major corporate transaction requiring stockholder approval. In addition, this may prevent or discourage unsolicited acquisition proposals or offers for our capital stock that you may feel are in your best interest as one of our stockholders.
Future transfers by holders of our Class B common stock will generally result in those shares converting to Class A common stock, subject to limited exceptions, such as certain transfers effected for estate planning purposes. The conversion of Class B common stock to Class A common stock will have the effect, over time, of increasing the relative voting power of those holders of our Class B common stock who retain their shares in the long term.
The dual class structure of our common stock may adversely affect the trading market for our Class A common stock.
We cannot predict whether our dual class structure will, over time, result in a lower or more volatile market price of our Class A common stock, adverse publicity, or other adverse consequences. Certain stock index providers, such as S&P Dow Jones, exclude companies with multi-class share structures from being added to certain of its indices, including the S&P 500. In addition, several stockholder advisory firms and large institutional investors oppose the use of multiple class structures. As a result, the dual class structure of our common stock may make us ineligible for inclusion in certain indices and may discourage such indices from selecting us for inclusion, notwithstanding our automatic termination provision, may cause
stockholder advisory firms to public negative commentary about our corporate governance practices or otherwise seek to cause us to change our capital structure, and may result in large institutional investors not purchasing shares of our Class A common stock. Any exclusion from certain stock indices could result in less demand for our Class A common stock. Any actions or publications by stockholder advisory firms or institutional investors critical of our corporate governance practices or capital structure could also adversely affect the value of our Class A common stock.
We could be subject to securities class action litigation.
In the past, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against companies following periods of volatility in the market price of a company’s securities. This risk is especially relevant for us, because technology companies have experienced significant stock price volatility in recent years. This type of litigation, if instituted, could result in substantial costs and a diversion of management’s attention and resources, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Additionally, the dramatic increase in the cost of directors’ and officers’ liability insurance may make it more expensive for us to obtain directors’ and officers’ liability insurance in the future and may require us to opt for lower overall policy limits and coverage or to forgo insurance that we may otherwise rely on to cover significant defense costs, settlements, and damages awarded to plaintiffs, or incur substantially higher costs to maintain the same or similar coverage. These factors could make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified executive officers and members of our board of directors.
General Risk Factors
Adverse economic conditions or reduced information technology spending could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our business depends on the overall demand for information technology and on the economic health of our current and prospective customers. In addition, the purchase of our platform is often discretionary and may involve a significant commitment of capital and other resources. Weak global and regional economic conditions and spending environments, geopolitical instability and uncertainty, weak economic conditions in certain regions or a reduction in information technology spending regardless of macro-economic conditions, including the effects of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and the recent conflict in Ukraine, on the foregoing issues, could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition, including longer sales cycles, lower prices for our platform, higher default rates among our channel partners, reduced sales and slower or declining growth.
We may be adversely affected by natural disasters, pandemics and other catastrophic events, and by man-made problems such as war, armed conflict, terrorism, that could disrupt our business operations, and our business continuity and disaster recovery plans may not adequately protect us from a serious disaster.
Natural disasters or other catastrophic events may cause damage or disruption to our operations, international commerce, and the global economy, and thus could have an adverse effect on us. Our business operations are also subject to interruption by fire, power shortages, flooding, and other events beyond our control. In addition, our global operations expose us to risks associated with public health crises, such as pandemics and epidemics, which could harm our business and cause our operating results to suffer. For example, the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures that we, our customers and governmental authorities have adopted, as described in detail elsewhere in these risk factors. In addition, our growth rate may actually slow or decline once the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic tapers as people begin to return to offices and other workplaces. Further, acts of war, armed conflict, terrorism and other geopolitical unrest, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, could cause disruptions in our business or the businesses of our partners or the economy as a whole. In the event of a natural disaster, including a major earthquake, blizzard, or hurricane, or a catastrophic event such as a fire, power loss, cyberattack, or telecommunications failure, we may be unable to continue our operations and may endure system interruptions, reputational harm, delays in development of our platform, lengthy interruptions in service,
breaches of data security, and loss of critical data, all of which could have an adverse effect on our future operating results. Climate change could result in an increase in the frequency or severity of such natural disasters. For example, our corporate offices are located in California, a state that frequently experiences earthquakes, wildfires, heatwaves and droughts. Additionally, all the aforementioned risks will be further increased if we do not implement an effective disaster recovery plan or our partners’ disaster recovery plans prove to be inadequate.
The continuing COVID-19 pandemic could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had and continues to cause general business disruption worldwide. The full extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic will directly or indirectly impact our business, operating results, cash flows, and financial condition will depend on future developments that are highly uncertain and cannot be accurately predicted.
We have experienced, and may continue to experience, negative impacts on certain parts of our business following the implementation of shelter-in-place orders and work-from-home requirements, to mitigate the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a lengthening of the sales cycle for some prospective customers and delays in the delivery of professional services and trainings to our customers.
It is possible that additional, more protective vaccine mandates may be announced by state or local jurisdictions that could impact our workforce and operations. Although we cannot predict with certainty the impact any mandates will have on our workforce and operations, these requirements and any future requirements may result in attrition and impede our ability to recruit and retain our workforce. These measures also may further disrupt the national supply chain, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.
We do not yet know the full extent of potential impacts on our business, operations or on the global economy as a whole, particularly if the COVID-19 pandemic continues and persists for an extended period of time. Potential impacts include:
•our customer prospects and our existing customers may experience slowdowns in their businesses, which in turn may result in reduced demand for our platform, lengthening of sales cycles, loss of customers, and difficulties in collections;
•we have started to open select offices in accordance with local ordinances, however, most of our employees continue to work from home and a substantial number may continue to do so for the foreseeable future, which may result in decreased employee productivity and morale with increased unwanted employee attrition;
•we continue to incur fixed costs, particularly for real estate, and are deriving reduced or no benefit from those costs;
•we may continue to experience disruptions to our growth planning, such as for facilities and international expansion;
•we anticipate incurring costs in returning to work from our facilities around the world, including changes to the workplace, such as space planning, food service, and amenities;
•we may be subject to legal liability for safe workplace claims;
•our critical vendors could go out of business;
•substantially all our in-person marketing events, including conferences, have been canceled and we are only recently returning to limited in-person events, and we may continue to experience prolonged delays in our ability to reschedule or conduct in-person events and other related activities; and
•our marketing, sales, and support organizations are accustomed to extensive face-to-face customer and partner interactions, and our ability to conduct business is largely unproven.
Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and operating results.
Moreover, due to the increasingly distributed nature of many workplaces as a result of shelter-in-place mandates, the demand for cybersecurity solutions like ours has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, our business has experienced, and may continue to experience, a positive impact as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we have seen slower growth in certain operating expenses due to reduced business travel, and the virtualization or cancellation of customer and employee events. However, as a vaccine becomes widely available and people begin to return to offices and other workplaces, any positive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business may slow or decline once the impact of the pandemic tapers.
Investors’ expectations of our performance relating to environmental, social and governance factors may impose additional costs and expose us to new risks.
There is an increasing focus from certain investors, employees, users and other stakeholders concerning corporate responsibility, specifically related to environmental, social and governance matters (ESG). Some investors may use these non-financial performance factors to guide their investment strategies and, in some cases, may choose not to invest in us if they believe our policies and actions relating to corporate responsibility are inadequate. We may face reputational damage in the event that we do not meet the ESG standards set by various constituencies.
Furthermore, if our competitors’ corporate social responsibility performance is perceived to be better than ours, potential or current investors may elect to invest with our competitors instead. In addition, in the event that we communicate certain initiatives and goals regarding environmental, social and governance matters, we could fail, or be perceived to fail, in our achievement of such initiatives or goals, or we could be criticized for the scope of such initiatives or goals. If we fail to satisfy the expectations of investors, employees and other stakeholders or our initiatives are not executed as planned, our reputation and business, operating results and financial condition could be adversely affected.
If industry or financial analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, or if they issue inaccurate or unfavorable research regarding our Class A common stock, our stock price and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our Class A common stock may be influenced by the research and reports that industry or financial analysts publish about us, our business, our market and our competitors. We do not control these analysts or the content and opinions included in their reports. If any of the analysts who cover us issues an inaccurate or unfavorable opinion regarding our stock price, our stock price would likely decline. If our financial results fail to meet, or significantly exceed, our announced guidance or the expectations of analysts or public investors, analysts could downgrade our Class A common stock or publish unfavorable research about us. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of our Class A common stock or fail to publish reports on us regularly, our visibility in the financial markets could decrease, which in turn could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.
We could be subject to securities class action litigation.
In the past, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against companies following periods of volatility in the market price of a company’s securities. This type of litigation, if instituted, could result in substantial costs and a diversion of management’s attention and resources, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, or financial condition. Additionally, the dramatic increase in the cost of directors’ and officers’ liability insurance may make it more expensive for us to obtain directors’ and officers’ liability insurance in the future and may require us to opt for lower overall policy limits and coverage or to forgo insurance that we may otherwise rely on to cover significant defense costs, settlements, and damages awarded to plaintiffs, or incur substantially higher costs to maintain the same or
similar coverage. These factors could make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified executive officers and members of our board of directors.
We do not intend to pay dividends in the foreseeable future. As a result, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our Class A common stock.
We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain all available funds and any future earnings for use in the operation of our business and do not anticipate paying any dividends in the foreseeable future. Any determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our board of directors. Accordingly, investors must rely on sales of their Class A common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on their investments.
Provisions in our charter documents and under Delaware law could make an acquisition of us, which may be beneficial to our stockholders, more difficult and may limit attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management.
Provisions in our restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws may have the effect of delaying or preventing a merger, acquisition or other change of control of the company that the stockholders may consider favorable. In addition, because our board of directors is responsible for appointing the members of our management team, these provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors. Among other things, our restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws include provisions that:
•provide that our board of directors is classified into three classes of directors with staggered three-year terms;
•permit our board of directors to establish the number of directors and fill any vacancies and newly created directorships;
•require super-majority voting to amend some provisions in our restated certificate of incorporation and restated bylaws;
•authorize the issuance of “blank check” preferred stock that our board of directors could use to implement a stockholder rights plan;
•provide that only our chief executive officer or a majority of our board of directors will be authorized to call a special meeting of stockholders;
•eliminate the ability of our stockholders to call special meetings of stockholders;
•do not provide for cumulative voting;
•provide that directors may only be removed “for cause” and only with the approval of two-thirds of our stockholders;
•provide for a dual class common stock structure in which holders of our Class B common stock may have the ability to control the outcome of matters requiring stockholder approval, even if they own significantly less than a majority of the outstanding shares of our common stock, including the election of directors and other significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets;
•prohibit stockholder action by written consent, which requires all stockholder actions to be taken at a meeting of our stockholders;
•provide that our board of directors is expressly authorized to make, alter, or repeal our bylaws; and
•establish advance notice requirements for nominations for election to our board of directors or for proposing matters that can be acted upon by stockholders at annual stockholder meetings.
Moreover, Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law (DGCL), may discourage, delay, or prevent a change in control of our company. Section 203 imposes certain restrictions on mergers, business combinations, and other transactions between us and holders of 15% or more of our common stock.
Our restated certificate of incorporation contains exclusive forum provisions for certain claims, which may limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or employees.
Our restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware, to the fullest extent permitted by law, will be the exclusive forum for any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf, any action asserting a breach of fiduciary duty, any action asserting a claim against us arising pursuant to the DGCL, our restated certificate of incorporation, or our amended and restated bylaws, or any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine.
Moreover, Section 22 of the Securities Act creates concurrent jurisdiction for federal and state courts over all claims brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act or the rules and regulations thereunder. Our restated certificate of incorporation provides that the federal district courts of the United States will, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act, or Federal Forum Provision. Our decision to adopt a Federal Forum Provision followed a decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Delaware holding that such provisions are facially valid under Delaware law. While there can be no assurance that federal or state courts will follow the holding of the Delaware Supreme Court or determine that the Federal Forum Provision should be enforced in a particular case, application of the Federal Forum Provision means that suits brought by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act must be brought in federal court and cannot be brought in state court.
Section 27 of the Exchange Act creates exclusive federal jurisdiction over all claims brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder. In addition, the Federal Forum Provision applies to suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act. Accordingly, actions by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder must be brought in federal court.
Our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with the federal securities laws and the regulations promulgated thereunder.
Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring or holding any interest in any of our securities shall be deemed to have notice of and consented to our exclusive forum provisions, including the Federal Forum Provision. These provisions may limit a stockholders’ ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum of their choosing for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us and our directors, officers, and employees. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our restated certificate of incorporation or restated bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.